
Class 
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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



EXODUS FROM POVERTY, 



OR 



THE OTHER ECONOMICS 



BY 



AMOS NORTON CRAFT, D. D., Ph. D. 



Author of "Epidemic Delusions", Etc., 

Etc., Professor of Economics and 

Analytical Psychology. 



$2.00 BY MAIL. 



Published By 

THE ECONOMIC PUBLISHING CO., 

1188 Main Street, Bridgeport, Conn. 






Copyright, 1914 

By William Henry Talmage 

All rights reserved including that of translation into foreign languages. 



OCT i4l9i4 



JOHN F. HIGGINS 

PRINTER AND BINDER 

376-382 MONROE STREET 
CHICAGO. ILLINOIS 



GI.A379992 



FOREWORD 



The writer of this book was endowed by nature with an 
original and logical mind of unusual power. His library was 
immense and he was a catholic and discriminative reader. His 
favorite books included all the greatest treatises on govern- 
ment and economics. This book, The Other Economics, was 
the crowning work of his life, though he did not live to put 
it in final literary form. This accounts for certain inequali- 
ties in style and development of thought occasionally notice- 
able. 

The Rev. William Henry Talmage, who kindly under- 
took to edit the manuscript, wisely decided that it was not 
best to change the verbal form in which this master-thinker 
had embodied his novel system, even though in a few in- 
stances only a rough draft of the argument was outlined. 
Assistance was rendered in the verification of references by 
The Rev. E. J. Craft and Mrs. Ernestine Craft Cobern, son 
and daughter of Doctor Craft. 

THE PUBLISHERS. 

P. S The reader should bear in mind that the Author died August 

30, 1912. This will explain some sentences which the European war has 
now changed into past history and entitles the Author to even greater 
regard. 



EDITOiR'S PREFACE. 



The startling new truths of Doctor Craft are many, and 
his arguments destructive to theories now dominating the 
minds of the average statesman, teacher and reformer ; on this 
account, we can scarcely hope that his valuable work will be- 
come immediately popular. 

The Author stands alone— a John The Baptist— crying in 
the wilderness against the tremendous economic blunder of 
the race. 

The Other Economics, which we have taken the liberty 
of also naming. Exodus from Poverty, lays the foundation 
for a real science of Economics. We may now understand 
the cause of poverty and realize the direction to take if we 
would escape its ravages. 

Being more or less conversant with the (pliilosophy of 
the deceased Author, we are ready to reply to any criticism 
that may be brought to our attention, or to communicate with 
persons interested in this new message to humanity. 

We have accepted the office of Secretary to The Other 
Economics League, (a non-partisan and non-sectarian or-- 
ganization) the purpose of which, at present, is to act as a 
nucleus around which favorable sentiment, relative to the 
Craft plan of a Government Economic Experiment Station, 
may gather for practical aims. The reader, therefore, who is 
convinced of the value of The Other Economics is invited to 
communicate with the Secretary. 

The Rev. William Henry Talmage, 
Secretary of The Other Economics League, Chairman of 

Social Service Commission of South Dakota, Flandreau, 

South Dakota. 



SOME OF THE SOURCES OiF INFORMATION* 



Abstract of the Thirteenth Census. 

Ancient Lowly, (The), Ward. 

American Magazine. 

American At Work, (The), Frazer. 

Baxter, Sylvester, in The Outlook. 

Bausket, F. N. in Van Norden Magazine. 

Census, The Twelfth and Thirteenth. 

Cosmopolitan, (The). 

Distribution of Products, Atkinson. 

Documentary History of The American Industrial Society. 

Everybody's Magazine. 

Evolution of Modern Capitalism, Hobson. 

Effect of Machinery on Wages, Wells. 

Economic Principles of Confucius, Chen-Huan-Chang. 

Facts and Figures the Basis of Economic Science, Atkinson 

Gompers, Samuel, in New York World. 

Jacobs, Joseph, in American Magazine. 

Labor Saving Machines, Samuelson. 

Modern Industrial Progress, Cochrane. 

Mitchell, John, in The Outlook. 

Metropolitan, (The). 

Matthews, John L., in Hampton's Magazine. 

New York Times. 

Nicholson, J. S., of University of Edinburgh. 

New York World. 

Nineteenth Century Magazine. 

Outlook, The. 

Poverty, Robert Hunter. 

Privilege and Democracy, Howe. 

Progress of Invention, Byrn. 

Principles of Economics, Fetter. 

Popular Electricity. 



6 SOME OF THE SOURCES OF INFOaMATION 

Popular Mechanics. 

Recent Economic Changes, Wells 

Railway Problems of Tomorrow, L. BuUard in Tech. Maga- 
zine. 

Social Unrest, Brooks. 

Short Studies, Froude. 

Six Centuries of Work and Wages, Thorold Rogers of Oxford 
University. 

Strabo Geographica. 

Story of Sugar, George Thomas Surface. 

Saturday Evening Post. 

Scientific American. 

Tarbell, Ida M., in The A!merican Magazine. 

The Technical World. 

Thirteenth Annual Report of the Commission of Labor on 
Hand and Machine Labor. 

Whiteman, William, in Everybody's Magazine. 

Women and Her Oiccupation, W. J. Thomas, in American 
Magazine. 

World's Work, The. 

Zion's Herald, Boston. 



*Others quoted in the body of the work. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Foreword .• j 

Editor's Preface ^ 4 

Some of the Sources of Information 5-6 

PART FIRST 

The Present Economic System 

CHAPTER I 

PRICES AND SCARCITY 

The cause of poverty — The resulting system of economics — Proof 
descriptions from orthodox text books — Demand and desire 
for goods not the same — Effect of competition — Money value 
the measure of the increase of scarcity — Analysis of money 
value 13- 19 

CHAPTER H 

PRICES AND SCARCITY — CONTINUED 

Statement of English Economist — Destruction of products — 
Labor as a commodity — Relation of wages to scarcity — 
Monopolies — The prosperity before a crisis — Rent and 
scarcity 20-24 

CHAPTER HI 

COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 

Save as much as possible — Save and rent money — Become an 
employer — Back to the farm — Avoid idleness — Become in- 
telligent and skillful — Strike for higher wages — Be honest — 
Single Tax — Elimination of Middlemen — The Minimum Wage 
— Trusts — Foreign Immigration — Protective Tariff and Free 
Trade— Foreign Trade — Morality of Working Class — Profit 
Sharing — Government Control — Government Ownership — 
Present Socialism — Communism — All rules of business un- 
workable for the majority 25-49 

7 



e TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

PRESENT PRODUCTION 

The daily per capita production — Per capita income from farms 
and factories — Fictitious wealth — The day of small things — 
Analysis of a panic — Products independent of money value 
— Products not affected by exchange — The object of trade — 
Products of labor redefined — Present system adjusted to the 
principle of increasing distress — Selfinterest and righteous- 
ness — New definition for wealth — Money and superstition — 
The orchard illustration — The rich man — The evil doctrine 
of class-hatred 50- 66 

CHAPTER V 

PROFITS 

Profits not the cause of poverty — Profits in industrial combina- 
tions — The average "watermelon" — The sugar trust — Profit 
from transportation — Profits in agriculture — The real enemy 67- 72 

CHAPTER VI 

WAGES 

The effect of the increased productivity of labor — Sewing women 
— The cotton gin — Poverty of those in the cotton industry — 
The steam-ship and stokers' wages — Iron and steel — Wages 
in Europe — American tenements — Japan — Meat packing — 
Effect of occasional employment — Wages in relation to 
standards of living — Conclusion of Froude — Wages in 
former times — Cause of our nominal high wages — The per 
cent- without property 'j-Tt- 84 

CHAPTER VII 

RESTRICTED POWER MACHINERY 

Its powers if it could be introduced— Little used in Agriculture 
— Little used in Manufacture — Possibilities under a right 
system — Its present incentive 85- 90 

CHAPTER VIII 

THE IMPENDING CRISIS 

The displacement caused by steam-power— The vast work which 
it afforded— The job about finished— The dilemma of the 
unemployed 91-97 



TABLE OF CONTENTS » 

PART SECOND 
The Other System 

CHAPTER I 

THE OTHER ECONOMICS 

The two p^rinciples of economics defined — Both might be crude 
or highly evolved— Only the destructive principle has ever 
been tested — Co-operation and competition common to both 
principles — Blindness of some Socialistic thinkers — Essen- 
tials relative to the new system — An economic system not 
related to the morals of people — The constructive principle 
consistent with the ethics of religion 101-108 

CHAPTER H 

THE OTHER ECONOMICS — CONTINUED 

An outline — Donation of labor and products — New definition for 
Capital — Distribution by the rule of the common good — 
Expert aid from the Government — People are not their own 
— Individuals are not producers — The kind of poverty now 
prohibited by law — Wealth a virtue — Impossibility of over- 
production — The public benefaction — Its consistency with 
the claims of Jesus 109-121 

CHAPTER III 

OUR RESOURCES 

Cotton— Flax— Wool— Food— Chemical fertilizers — Productivity of 
water for food — Game farming — Cattle by the factory plan 
— Coal deposits — Peet — Oil and gas — Alcohol for light and 
heat — Electricity — Wind — Sunlight — The new water wheel — 
Iron — Copper — Lumber 122-130 

CHAPTER IV 

LABOR SAVING MACHINES 

Hard labor not needful — Fall River — Canning — Ore machines — 
Farming implements — Men and machines compared with 
men of former times — Automatic machines — Panama Canal 131-140 

CHAPTER V 

ELECTRIFIED FARM AND HOME 

Farm in Clinton County, New York— The powers of the motor 
— Electrified farm at Minot, Maine — A servantless palace — 
A modern kitchen — The culinary college 141 -146 



10 TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VI 

PRODUCTION OF FOOD 

Number of men required for wheat — Oats — Indian Corn — 
Potatoes — Seeds — Vegetables — Butter— Milk— Meat— Eggs 
and Poultry — Sugar 147-160 

CHAPTER VII 

PRODUCTION OF CLOTHING 

The number of persons required for cotton — Linen — Wool- 
Sewing— Shoes— Lace— Millinery, etc 161-167 

CHAPTER VIII 

MINING 

The number of persons required for mining coal — Coke — Drilling 

for oil — Mining structural — Abrasive — Chemical, etc 168-171 

CHAPTER IX 

TRANSPORTATION AND DISTRIBUTION 

Automatic conveyors — Cars loaded by machinery — Automatic car 
lines — Concrete tubes — Automatic waiters — Mechanical stokers 
— Floating cranes— Automatic signals — Automatic stores— 
The inefficiency of the present system — Plan under The 
Other Economics 172-181 

CHAPTER X 

TOWN BUILDING 

Tree-felling machinery — Automatic lumber machines — Cement in 
the place of wood — Automatic moulds — Suggestions of Mr. 
Edison — Grading— Trench digging — Rock crushing 182-189 

CHAPTER XI 

WEALTH AND LEISURE FOR ALL 

Making of machines does not provide employment equal to that 
displaced — The canthook — The steam engine — The sewing 
machine — The present per cent, of inefficiency and poverty — 
Bounties of nature sufficient for wealth for all — Applied 
science ample— Methods by which to obtain wealth 190-196 



TAI3LE OF CONTENTS U 

CHAPTER XII 

THE MENTAL AND MORAL POWERS OF THE POOR 

Cruelty of popular opinion — Powers of poor in relation to the 
use of money — All equal in reasoning faculties who are 
normal — Slums in relation to propagating slums — Absence ot 
hereditary divisions of society — The new compound — Present 
repression of individual talents — Diary of a farmer's wife — 
Some advantages to state in wealth for all — Babies not 
loafers — Present system and rebels — The relation of income 
to morals 197-208 

CHAPTER XIII 

MORAL RESULTS 

Blindness of false philosophy— The burglar — Gradual starvation 
in relation to sentiment — Moral philosophy of the burglar — 
Cause of most suicides — The immorality of the present sys- 
tem — The girl in the slums — The effects of the abolition of 
poverty — A new vision of Christianity 209-217 

CHAPTER XIV 

AN OBJECT LESSON NEEDED 

The urgency of doing something — Theories not' accepted until 
demonstrated — Safeguards — The timeliness of a Government 
test — All men ready — Superiority of character to business 
rules — Nature of the object lesson — Its interest to Socialists 
Tactics — The danger of any other than a Government test 218-224 

CHAPTER XV 

THE GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT STATION 

Reasons for station — Purely business — Power to enforce rules — 
Explanatory — A reverse economic principle evolving reverse 
business rules — Not subject to a majority vote — Expert 
supervision — Civil Service tests — Inducements to enter — Size 
of first unit — Its symmetry — The cost — Special aids given by 
Government — Locations — Employment for all — The adjust- 
ment generally if successful 225-238 



PART FIRST 
THE PRESENT ECONOMIC SYSTEM 



CHAPTER I 

PRICES AlTD SOARCITT 

There can be no further progress of the race until the cause 
of poverty is apprehended and abolished. 

We are at present in grave danger of becoming so much 
engrossed in vain efforts to heal the multiplying wounds of pov- 
erty that our age of civilization will topple and fall, as others 
have done, before we are able to strike the evil at its source. 

The Cause of Poverty 

Can two men, all things being equal, get much from each 
other while struggling to give little? 

Will not both remain in a state of poverty even though 
surrounded by inexhaustible bounties of nature? 

Is not the effect the same when men are a multitude? 

The attempt to attain wealth under the principle of giving 
little defeats the aim. It establishes competition and economic 
anarchy ; produces concentration, as men plus machinery become 
unequal factors; and evolves a system perfectly adjusted to 
scarcity and its perpetuation from wliich there is no escape for 
the majority as long as that principle survives. 

The microbe of poverty lurks in the principle, that each unit 
of society shall give as little as possible to collective society, in 
all matters pertaining to the production and distribution of the 
means of existence. 

The Resulting System 

The present economic system began as an adjustment to 
scarcity when men were ignorant of the bounties of nature and 

13 



14 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

the powers of applied science and, like lower animals, began to 
engage in a competitive struggle for existence * 

A system of business which is an adjustment to the scarcity 
of things desired is not workable unless that scarcity is per- 
petuated. Therefore the production and distribution of the 
common necessaries — enough for all who assist in producing 
and distributing them — is and always has been and always must 
be impossible as a business enterprise under the existing economic 
system. If this ideal is to be reached and those evils which now 
menace the Church, State and Home be suppressed, there is but 
one remedy : the present system of economics must be abolished. 
Compromises with it will but prolong our social agonies. 

That so-called economic science which only attempts to 
examine our present economic system commenting upon certain 
modes of industrial warfare, may be counted trustworthy as far 
as it goes; but it does not include the '"cause" or the "cure" of 
poverty within its survey. In all university text-books on eco- 
nomics, statements similar to the following may be found: 
Scarcity of things desired is the one objective 
condition of value. 

Exchange in the usual economic sense is the 
transfer of goods by two owners, each of whom deems 
the goods taken more than the value-equivalent of the 
one given. 

Where a two sided competition exists, the bid- 
ding goes on until a price is reached where the 
least eager seller and the least eager buyer have the 
narrowest possible motive for exchange. 

In a group of consumption goods, all of the same 
quality, the marginal utility declines as the quantity 
increases. If there is a remarkable potato crop, pota- 
toes fall in value. 



*Prof. Alfred Russell Wallace's book "Social Environment and Moral 
Progress" has appeared since the death of Dr. Craft and contains some 
statements of views strikingly similar to his. Such statements are wel- 
comed as showing how another mind working independently felt the need 
of a new system of economics ; though unfortunately the aged scientist 
failed to see the "root-cause" of the evils which he has so vividly depicted 
and therefore failed in the application of the correct remedy.— W. H. T. 



PRICES AND SCARCITY 15 

It may be of advantage to the seller to destroy a 
part of the supply when the increased price of the 
smaller amount will give a larger total. 

Monopoly is such a degree of control over the 
supply of goods in a given market that a net gain will 
result to the seller, if a portion is withheld. 

Demand is the desire for goods united with the 
power to give something in exchange. 

Demand tends to diminish as the price increases. 

Rent may be defined as the value of the scarce 
uses of wealth during a given period. 

The wage system is the organization of industry 
wherein some men owning capital buy at their com- 
petitive value the services of men without capital. 

Money-wages are paid out of money received for 
the product, and this amount, after allowing for the 
upkeep of capital and other necessary expenses, is the 
superior limit above which wages cannot permanent- 
ly rise. The inferior limit below which wages cannot 
permanently fall is in general given in Ricardo's 
formula of "necessary wages". Laborers must have 
enough to live on or they will not live themselves; 
and enough to feed their children or their children 
will not live. 

There is a temptation to invest capital in ma- 
chinery in such a degree as to reduce the demand for 
the products of machinery. If one man tries to save 
he can do so ; but if everyone tries to save, and to con- 
vert his capital into permanent investments a great . 
many people will fail to realize their expected profit 
because of an overproduction of machinery. 

The period leading up to a crisis is one of general 
prosperity.^ 

Quite a startling revelation is obtained by a close analysis 
of the above orthodox and standard descriptions. They form at 
once a terrible indictment of the present economic system. The 
general principle implied in all the above statements is that 
'^Scarcity of things desired is the one objective condition of 
value" The subjective condition of value is in the subject, or 



1 Modern Industrial Progress, Cochrane, p. 212 et passim. 



16 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

person, viz: his desire for goods. The objective condition of 
value is the scarcity of the goods. Both of these conditions are 
necessary in order that anything may have a money-value. Goods 
which no one wants cannot be sold. If every one has all he 
wants of them they have no commercial value. If everybody 
has all he wants of the kind of goods offered for sale the goods 
cannot be sold. Therefore the scarcity of goods must be per- 
manent, for otherwise the business of producing goods for sala 
could not be permanent. The scarcity of goods cannot be per- 
manent unless the scarcity of goods is permanently endured by 
a portion of the population. In order that prices may continue, 
a corresponding amount and variety of poverty must continue 
also. Therefore in order to abolish poverty you would neces- 
sarily have to abolish prices which would abolish profits and 
wages, exchange and a scarce medium of exchange, which would 
abolish the present economic system — the very existence of which 
depends upon the perpetuation of poverty. Poverty cannot be 
abolished while prices for labor and products continue. 

The "demand" for goods, under the present system of busi- 
ness, is not merely the desires of consumers and their willing- 
ness to work, although their labor may have produced the goods. 
One owns the desires and the other party to the proposed ex- 
change owns the goods. The one will not regard the other's 
desire as more than a value-equivalent for the goods which he 
is offering for sale. If you take your desires to a bank you 
cannot give them in exchange for money. They alone are not 
a demand. The law of "demand and supply" demands money, 
or something that can be exchanged for money ; and people are 
scarce to whom money is not scarce. If it were not so, money 
would be worthless ; for it is one of the things desired and the 
one objective condition of its value is scarcity. Everybody knows 
that inflated money is dangerous, and that if gold should become 
as plentiful as common earth, all business would be suspended 
until some other scarce medium of exchange could be discovered 
which would cause things exchanged to be sufficiently scarce. 



PRICES AND SCARCITY 17 

"Where a two-sided competition exists, and the bidding 
goes on until a price is reached where the least eager buyer and 
the least eager seller have the narrowest possible motive for ex- 
change, the seller sells at the lowest price that will give him the 
least profit that will enable him to continue in business". For 
this reason, as a general rule, profits are small. The buyer also 
must have the narrowest possible motive for refusing to buy. 
About ninety per cent, of buyers are wage earners and farmers 
who pay themselves small wages. When such a consumer wants 
the goods the price must be made only so high for him, in pro- 
portion to his ability to buy, that he shall have the smallest pos- 
sible motive for refusing to give money or goods in exchange for 
goods that he wants. If he is a low wage earner, sufficient food 
and clothing and shelter to sustain life, must be so low in price, 
in proportion to his wages, that he has the smallest possible mo- 
tive for refusing to buy them. The other alternatives open to 
him are to become a beggar or a thief. If he is a high wage 
earner and is trying to buy a silk dress for his wife, the price 
must be only enough to tempt him to buy silk instead of cloth 
of lower grade. All consumers must have the smallest possible 
motive for refusing to buy. Consumption must be small. There- 
fore production must be small in proportion to the population, 
because goods that cannot be sold cannot be produced. 

Competition between buyers and sellers, or producers and 
consumers, each trying to get much by giving little-, causes the 
average man to give little and to get little. Small profits result 
in small wages, and small profits and wages result in small con- 
sumption which necessitates small production because of the 
small purchasing power of small wages and small profits. 

The race, as yet, is an economic dwarf due to the restrictive 
power of our short-sighted grasping system. 

*Tn a group of consumption goods, all of the same quality, 
the 'marginal utility' declines as the quantity increases," because 
the "utility" of goods is measured by their price in the market. 
Potatoes at a low price are not less useful for food, and are not 



18 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

less desirable to hungry work-people in the city not far distant, 
who are not able to buy enough of them to supply their wants. 
When farmers have produced a so-called overproduction of pota- 
toes they do not plant as many the following year. Then the 
greater scarcity of potatoes causes them to command a higher 
price. The difference in the money values was not in the pota- 
toes, for the potatoes of the preceding year were not different in 
any of the attributes that belong to them. The increased value 
of the potatoes of the following year was not in the potatoes 
produced but in those which were not produced, or in the potatoes 
before which the minus sign should be placed. The increased 
money value was the money value of scarcity and the unsupplied 
wants of the people who wanted potatoes and could not buy 
them.* 

Money values are not measures of wealth. They measure 
poverty. The minus sign should be placed before the dollar 
mark. The money value of products, lands and all property as 
given in Census Reports shows the money value of the poverty 
of our people. Wealth for all, would cause wealth to have no 
money value. Money values fall in proportion as goods desired 
and produced are more nearly enough for all, while their money 
values rise in proportion as they are not enough for all. The 
money value of land, for instance, increases in proportion as 
the land is taken by private owners, and the number of people 
who desire land and cannot get it, increases. Therefore the 
money value is not in the land but in the landless. Its commer- 



*puring a recent year of so-called overproduction in the potato belt 
jn Maine, a farmer produced one hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes 
which he permitted to rot in the ground because he could not sell them. 
The price was so low that no one could get wages digging them and 
hauling them to the market- The following year he produced but one 
hundred bushels which he sold for twenty-five dollars. This money does 
not^ represent the value of the potatoes for the greater amount of the pre- 
ceding year had no money value. It does not represent the value of the 
wants of the people who are able to buy a sufficient supply of potatoes, for 
more people bought potatoes during the preceding year of greater abund- 
ance. The truth is apparent that the money value is the value of a minus 
quantity of potatoes and human wants which were unsupplied. 



PRICES AND SCARCITY 19 

cial value depends on its "rental" value, which depends upon the 
number of the landless. So we find rent defined in substantially- 
all standard text-books as "the value of the scarce uses of wealth 
during a given period." 

Manifestly money values measure the degree of poverty en- 
dured by the average competitor for the ownership of goods. 
And money, which measures poverty, is a means of perpetuating 
poverty because money itself is scarce. One must get possession 
of something that is scarce before he can get common necessaries 
for himself or family. If he gets possession of very much of 
that one scarce thing it will be still scarcer for other families. 

Because the scarcity of things desired is the one objective 
condition of value "it may be of advantage to the seller to 
destroy a part of the supply, when the increased price of the 
smaller amount will give a larger total." The fact that multi- 
tudes are in want and seeking work is not a "demand." There- 
fore men must now either destroy a part of goods on hand, or 
do what is equally brutal in effect, suspend production until "con- 
sumption overtakes production." This is only another method 
of increasing scarcity and the prices of goods so that a smaller 
number of people shall be able to obtain them. The brutality is 
not in our individual business men or the "soulless corporations'* 
which they form, but in the economic system which they obtained 
by inheritance from their savage ancestors in the cave and jungle. 

To desire a further continuance of that system which damns 
the majority of the race to perpetual poverty and gnaws away 
the vitals of nations, argues a soul void of the spirit of his Maker 
and an intellect, in business rr^atters, on a par with the jackal. 



CHAPTER II 

PRICES AND SCABCITir— CONTINUED 

One prominent economist illustrates the foregoing principle 
as follows : 

"U there are five hundred spinning mills in Lancashire 
where three hundred would suffice, the destruction of two hun- 
dred mills would no whit diminish the amount of real capital. 
If the two hundred mills were burnt down, though the individual 
owners would sustain loss, that loss, estimated in money, would 
be compensated by a money rise in the value of the other mills."^ 

The fact that many work-people in Lancashire are needing 
clothes (and are at work, or begging for work) would not give 
any money value to the two hundred mills that were destroyed. 
They would be needed, with all their distress, to sustain the 
money value of the three hundred mills that are still running. 
The amount of goods desired and not produced gives the money 
value to the mills and their product. This fact is evident when 
we remember that the mills and their product would have no 
money value if they were not scarce, and that they diminish in 
money value in proportion to their abundance. When the two 
hundred mills are destroyed the three hundred remaining would 
be equal in money value to the five hundred because of the 
greater number of people who would not be able to obtain suf- 
ficient supply of clothes. Therefore the money value is really in 
the distress of people and not in the mills. It is of vital im- 
portance that this grewsome genius of our present business sys- 
tem be clearly understood by all men who believe in the ethics 

1 Poverty, Robert Hunter, p. 337. 

20 



PRICES AND SCARCITY CONTINUED 31 

of brotherhood or in the principles of religion. This is the 
block before the wheels of progress. Men cannot perpetuate 
"distress" six days of the week and relieve it on the seventh. 

If by act of Providence, or conspiracy of farmers, farm 
products should be reduced by one-fourth, prices would rise in 
much greater proportion. The money value of the smaller 
product at a much greater price would be much more than that 
of the larger product at the former price. Census Reports and 
stock exchanges would show that our national wealth in farm 
products is greatly increased when there is less food and more 
people suffering hunger. The increased money value would be 
in the one-fourth that zms not produced and the distress of the 
greater number of people whose wants were unsuppHed. That 
would be the only change in things visible and invisible which 
could have any relation to the increased money values, or be 
measured by them. The increased wealth of the nation would 
consist wholly in its increase of poverty. 

In London fish markets, sometimes a part of the supply of 
fish is destroyed in order that the remaining amount may bring 
a higher price and yield a profit. (This custom is becoming 
common in America in various vocations). The increased money 
value lies in the fish destroyed and in the unsupplied wants of 
those people who could not get them at the higher price. This 
is only another way of stating the law of the present economic 
system, which no university text-book on economics describing 
the present economic system, will dispute: "Scarcity of things 
desired is the one objective condition of value." By causing 
them to be scarcer we increase the price and the number of 
people who cannot get them. 

Labor is a commodity. This is universally admitted. But 
did anyone ever see labor? What was its color, size and shape? 
What we have seen were laborers digging ditches and carrying 
burdens. We cannot detach "labor" from laborers and treat it 
as a separate being. "Labor is a commodity" is only a short 
way of saying, laborers are a commodity bought and sold 



22 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

in the market. The commodity is still a commodity when it can 
talk and have something to say about the price at which it shall 
be sold. This is a law of the existing economic system. It is 
worse than brutal because we are human. 

Therefore laborers are "a commodity" which capitalists buy 
at its competitive value. But laborers, in shop, school or pulpit, 
should not forget that they are indirectly buying and selling each 
other when they go to the store and buy goods, at the lowest 
possible price, which were made by other laborers who were 
bought at the lowest possible price. 

Wages, or the price of laborers, fall in proportion as laborers 
are less scarce. The Black Death, which killed off a great por- 
tion of the working population of England, caused a temporary 
scarcity of laborers and increased their wages, or their price in 
the market. This was highly satisfactory to the laborers who 
survived. In Sparta, according to Plutarch and Thucydides,^ 
when laborers became too cheap, the highly civilized rulers 
granted the favor to young men of the aristocracy to engage in 
the sport of killing unarmed laborers until they became scarcer 
and could be sold at a higher price. Those laborers were better 
fed and clothed when they became scarcer and their money value 
was increased. When cattle are excessively cheap the farmer 
does not feed them as much valuable grain. The lack of safety 
devices to protect the lives of work-people, unsanitary conditions 
in factories and tenement houses, drunkenness and vice, .exces- 
sive labor and insufficient nourishment, or any other causes which 
shorten the lives of work-people and diminish their number, 
tend to increase their scarcity and prices ; which higher price is 
very satisfactory to those who manage to survive. 

"Monopolies seek to control the supply of goods in the mar- 
ket so that a *net gain* will result to the seller, if a portion is 
withheld." The object of the monopoly is to cause a portion of 
the goods to be withheld in order that a less number of people 



2 Plutarch, Lycurgus, Thucydides, De Bello Peloponnesiaco, liber iv, 80. 



PRICES AND SCARCITY CONTINUED 23 

shall be able to obtain them. This malignity of design belongs 
to the existing economic system and not to the owners of the 
monopoly. They are aiming only to cause the greater scarcity 
which shall result in higher prices which will give them sufficient 
profits to enable them to continue in business, and give wealth 
to their children. These desires are noble. Every wage earner 
and small profit seeker withholds labor and goods when buyers 
offer too low a price. They, too, are monopolists to the extent 
of their abilities. A thief is not less a thief when his ability to 
steal is small. Both the big grasper and the little one deserve 
sympathy, because under the present economic system they are 
compelled to struggle to cause goods to be scarce for other 
people, in order that they may not be too scarce for their own 
families. Withholding labor and goods when there is not enough 
to supply the needs of all industrious people is criminal, however 
innocent the culprits may be. 

'The period leading up to a crisis is one of general pros- 
perity" because cheap money, or public confidence, increases the 
production and distribution of goods. The panic comes when 
there is what is falsely called overproduction, and there is too 
little scarcity and poverty. Prices, profits and wages fall in 
proportion as the quantity of goods in the markets increases. 
The falling profits and wages cause profit seekers and wage 
earners to refuse to continue to produce and distribute goods. 
The two classes of graspers, capitalists and laborers, go out on 
a strike, in an indirect way, to regain the former state of distress 
and poverty. 

Scarcity of some few things desired may be caused by the 
unequal distribution of the sources of supply in nature. But 
such scarcity does not exist, except for a few luxuries, such as 
diamonds, which require an expert to distinguish them from the 
manufactured article. There is no scarcity of supplies in nature 
for the production of common necessaries and most of the lux- 
uries now enjoyed by the millionaire. 

Scarcity of products may also be caused by the scarcity of 



24 • EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

the kind of labor necessary to produce them. Power machinery 
is now capable of doing most of the skilled work in most in- 
dustries. Sufficient skilled superintendence could be provided 
by giving opportunities for training experts, and by giving them 
sufficient inducements to encourage them to develop their talents. 
There is an inexhaustible supply of this kind of material, viz: 
men, women and children who are capable of becoming experts. 

''Rent may be defined as the value of the scarce uses of 
wealth during a given period." Wealth must be scarce, at pres- 
ent, in order to be wealth. If everyone should own a home and 
continue to live in it, there would be no tenants and no rent paid 
by them to landlords. Interest on money is a form of rent which 
is the money value of the scarce uses of money during a given 
period. Capital is rentable property although it may not be 
rented, but is occupied or used only by its owner. If you own 
a farm, its commercial value depends on the amoun.t of rent 
which would be paid by tenants for the use of it. Its commer- 
cial value to its owner depends on the poverty of other men in 
relation to the ownership of land. In like manner the poverty 
of the many and their willingness to work, gives commercial 
value to all real estate, all sources of raw materials, and all the 
means of production and distribution. All this is wealth in the 
commercial sense, only because it is desired and is scarce. If 
capital, having money value, is a good thing, poverty must be 
a good thing also, and everybody should religiously seek to in- 
crease and perpetuate it for his brother — especially if his brother 
lives in China. To defend this business we need a powerful 
navy, because Europe also is engaged in foreign trade and is 
trying to get as much as possible by giving as little as possible. 

"Peace on earth, good will toward men*' — the plan of Jesus 
outlined by herald angels — and the inspired song of the Holy 
Virgin: "He hath Med the hungry with good things'* are, after 
twenty centuries, sadly discordant melodies; alas, even among 
many defenders of the Faith ! 



CHAPTER III 

OOSCMON XSOON'OMIC DEI^USIONS 

"Save as much as possible." If everybody should obey 
this advice and spend as little as possible in order to save as 
much as possible, only as little as possible would be bought. 
Omly that little could be sold. Only that little could be pro- 
duced or reproduced, for men will not produce goods that can- 
not be sold. Therefore if everybody should save all he could 
no one could save anything. Production would diminish 
until the whole population would be living in the most ex- 
treme poverty that could be endured. Let teachers of eco- 
nomics be thoughtful when they give this advice, and say what 
this advice really implies, that they desire their advice shall 
be obeyed by the few in whom they are especially interested 
and that it should not be obeyed by everybody, or even by 
the majority of the people. 

"Save as much money as possible and place it where it 
will draw interest." If everybody was a money lender there 
would be no borrowers and no interest. Money would become 
worthless for its value depends upon rates of interest. Do 
these "Poor Richards" intend to destroy the present economic 
system by their advice or merely to give a "tip" to a few of 
their fellow citizens ! 

"Be more enterprising and go into business for yourself, 
and make money by becoming an employer." If everybody 
was making profits by becoming an employer of laborers, there 
would be no profits and no laborers or emploees. 

"Let low wage earners in the cities move into the country 
and go to farming." If all low wage earners should obey this 

25 



S6 > EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

advice there v^ould be fearful panic in the cities and in the 
country. The present economic system needs the suffering 
poor in the cities, and for that reason they are there. Cities 
have never been able to exist v^^ithout them. Thy are needed 
to give money value to the possessions which they want, but 
cannot obtain. What would be the money value of the tene- 
ment house section of New York city, if there were no home- 
less work-people to be herded in them? What would be the 
effect on the interwoven and ever sensitive financial interests 
of the nation if all such real estate should become worthless? 
But this would be only the beginning of the disaster that 
would follow, if all low wage earners should leave the cities and 
go into the country to engage in farming. Most wage earners 
in the cities came from the country not only on account of the 
loneliness of country life, but also because they could not pay 
rent or interest on the mortgage. If they should go back 
to the country and by some means produce crops, there would 
be an "overproduction" of farm products. Prices for farm 
products would be so low that the average farmer, while hav- 
ing perhaps food, would not be able to buy clothes for his 
family. To some thoughtless people in the cities a low price 
for farm products and a high price for manufactured goods 
is greatly desired. They seem to imagine that the poverty 
and distress of farmers would not be shared by city people. 
Those city editors and financiers who think that this result is 
desirable are not common highway robbers. They are in the 
midst of commercial war and are only expressing a preference 
concerning what portion of the population shall be slaughtered. 
The disaster to the city would be even greater than to 
the country. The multitude of low wage earners competing 
for work would no longer hold down the minimum wage from 
which wages and salaries grade upward. The cost of manu- 
facture in the cities would be greatly increased and the rural 
population in their distress, on account of low prices for the 
things they must sell, could not buy the city products. The 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 37 

presentKiay multitude of the occasionally employed in the city 
would no longer be there to be exploited during busy seasons^ 
Indeed there would be no busy seasons. Mrs. Millionaire 
would be compelled to wash her own clothes, and her hus- 
band would be compelled to be his own ditch digger and dray- 
man. Even the editor of the great Daily Universe, who gives 
this advice, and the great financier who owns the paper and 
the editor and the railroad which hungers to haul more farm 
products, would be compelled to be their own menial servants. 
No: they are not fools. They do not seriously desire that their 
advice be generally accepted. They only mean that if some 
few poor people should move to the country, in the right loca- 
tion, they might find what others moving away from the farm 
could not find, an improvement in their situation. 

"Avoid idleness." This also is good advice under the 
present economics, provided it is not generally obeyed. If 
everybody could and would go to work and keep at it ten 
hours a day, the owners of coal mines, for example, who can 
turn out as much coal in eight or ten months as they can sell 
in a year, would have on their hands after a year or two such 
an overproduction of coal that they would be compelled to 
sell below cost. They would become bankrupt and their em- 
ployees would be thrown out of work even if they seized the 
property themselves. Most other industries are in like situa- 
tion. If this advice should be generally obeyed there would 
be so great a reduction of "scarcity" and lowering of prices that 
profits and wages could not be obtained by continuing to pro- 
duce and distribute them. To avoid this catastrophe, all labor, 
on the average, is compelled to be about one-fourth the time 
idle. When any portion of our population is added to the 
non-producing classes, and the aristocracy above the working 
class increases in numbers, there is more work for the work- 
ing class. There is no difference in the economic effect of 
idleness simply because it is an hereditary privilege. If all 
aristocrats should go to work they could not be permitted to 



^8 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

increase the per capita amount of production of consumption 
goods, for, by so doing, they would cause the evils of "overpro- 
duction" and all its direful consequences. 

"Struggle to become intelligent and skillful." This advice 
if universally obeyed would not diminish poverty, under the 
present economic system, and might be dangerous. However 
learned and skillful a man may be, when he goes to the store 
to buy goods, scarcity of the things desired by him, is the one 
objective condition of value; and goods would not be there un- 
less such scarcity existed to give a profit to the storekeeper. 
If all work-people in all factories had all knowledge and skill, 
the factories could not run full time, or at their full capacity, 
without causing overproduction. The number of positions in 
whch experts are needed would not be increased. About the 
same proportion of people would be doomed to the mind- 
killing monotony of unskilled tasks as now. Such multitudes 
of skillful and highly educated work-people, who would still 
be competing for a chance to work and support families on 
an average wage of one dollar and sixty-five cents a day (the 
average in 1910), many of whom could find employment at 
that low wage only a part of the year, would be likely to 
organize a rebellioln, * either w^ith ballots or more deadly 
weapons, which Congress could not subdue. If the perpet- 
uation of the present economic system is high-above-all-su- 
premely-important, we should abandon democracy and our 
system of free schools. 

If all men were college graduates and as pure as light, 
about the present proportion of them would be compelled to 
endure all of the present degrees of poverty in order to keep 
the wheels of industry moving, while men continue to demand 
prices for labor and products. Every factory that ever closed 
down teaches us this truth. Owners do not close or reduce the 
number of hands, or run on part time during a dull season, 
because they enjoy it. They do this because they cannot 
continue, until other people are enduring a greater degree of 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS ^9 

poverty in relation to the products manufactured by them. 
If the present economic system is divine and must be pre- 
served, the working class are already becoming dangerously 
intelligent. 

"Strike for higher wages." This advice shows that the 
one giving it is sane, if he does not advise that his advice 
should be generally obeyed. A successful strike for higher 
wages in shoe factories alone, would cause the strikers to pay 
a higher price for shoes, but shoes are only one item in their 
expenses. With their higher wages they could buy more of 
other goods than before. They would be happy because all 
other work-people would be compelled to give them a con- 
tribution whenever they went to the store to buy shoes. But 
if all other work-people should strike for higher wages, and be 
successful, these work-people in the shoe factories would be 
compelled to pay a higher price for all other goods. Their 
higher wages would not then buy more than they had pre- 
viously bought with lower wages. A strike, in order to be an 
advantage to the strikers, must be the plunder of the many 
wage earners by the few. A general strike, if successful, 
would increase all wages and would increase the cost of living 
in the same proportion, and real wages, or wages in propor- 
tion to the cost of living, would be the same as before. 

"Be honest." That advice at least is generally obeyed. 
Most men are honest and will endure great privation rather 
than steal, when the theft is not in accordance with the gen- 
erally accepted code of honor required by the present eco- 
nomic system. Mere honesty, however, adds nothing to wages 
and salaries. If honest men were very scarce, an honest em- 
ployee would be able to command very high wages. 

Single Tax. — The advocates of this theory would tax vacant 
land as much as if it contained a home, store building, factory 
or other improvements, and they would not tax the improve- 
ments. Then they believe that men would not desire to own 
land for the purpose of keeping others from it until they could 



30 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

sell it for a high price. Thus it is believed all vacant land would 
become government property and anyone could get possession 
of it by paying the tax. It is asserted that more soil would be 
cultivated, more mines would be developed, more homes would 
be built and factories would be multiplied. The advocates of 
the theory would continue the use of money, prices, profits and 
wages. They do not propose to abolish the present economic 
system. 

This delusion is attractive to a man looking at a vacant 
lot in his neighborhood. It would be much easier for him to 
build and own a home if he did not have to pay a high price 
for that lot. As a special privilege for him and a few men this 
arrangement would be very desirable. If he should build a tene- 
ment house on that vacant lot, the price of the property would 
be about the same as now and he could get as much rent from 
tenants, provided he could enjoy the special privilege of owning 
the vacant lot by paying the government tax. But, if the mental 
vision of the single-taxer would extend far enough beyond him- 
self to see the rest of mankind, he would see the absurdity of 
his theory. For, if all should have the privilege of owning va- 
cant land and proceeded to place improvements thereon, he (the 
single-taxer) could not sell his improved property for more than 
the price of the improvements. The market valuation of all real 
estate .would fall in proportion to the cheapness of land. 

The rental value of his home, factory and tenement house 
would fall, if the greater cheapness of land would cause more 
of them to be built. They would not bear as large mortgages ; 
he could not borrow as much money on them. The tenants in 
his tenement house would pay less rent in proportion to the 
greater abundance of tenement houses. With regard to land and 
improvements on land and all things desired, the price depends 
upon their scarcity. Under the present economic system (which 
depends upon prices and scarcity) a fearful panic occurs 
when scarcity and poverty are tending to diminish for the ma- 
jority of the population. 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 31 

Has the reader not noticed that the surface of the ocean 
is without price and free to all who desire to occupy it ! And 
that on the ocean the places of shelter for steerage and first-class 
passengers are as different as they are on land ! If the whole 
surface of the earth should become as cheap and free as the 
surface of the ocean, (while the products of labor are pro- 
duced and distributed under the system of prices, profits and 
wages), there would be all the varieties of wealth and poverty 
which are existing now. The hungry cannot eat land. The price 
of bread and meat falls as their quantity in the market in- 
creases. When there is too little hunger among the under 
classes, both capital and labor, employed in the bread and 
meat industries, go out on a strike (in effect) and refuse to 
work until bread and meat become scarce and more people 
are unable to obtain sufficient nourishment. 

If, for example, the tax on unimproved potato land in the 
potato belt in Maine and New Brunswick should cause its pres- 
ent owners to give it to the government, and, if many people 
should be tempted to occupy it and live in tents and dugouts to 
produce potatoes, they would soon be in great distress. The 
scarcity and price of potatoes would be so diminished that thou- 
sands of bushels would be left in the fields to rot, unsold. 

This often occurs there now (and elsewhere) although 
multitudes of toilers in nearby cities need the potatoes. These 
extra potato farmers could not get money enough to buy other 
foods, clothes and building materials. The government would 
evict them because they could not get money with which to pay 
the single tax. The situation would be the same in all other in- 
dustries were the single-tax principle applied. Meanwhile the 
big capitalists of the whole nation would be in a panic because 
of the withdrawal of the ''occasionally employed" to become their 
own. employers. The scarcity of laborers would increase 
wages, wipe out profits and drive capitalists into bankruptcy, 
and throw their employees out of employment; or, it would 
draw the laborers back from the farms to the factories and coi>- 



32 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

gested centers and to present conditions — or worse- If by some 
magic, single tax should enable every family to own comfortable 
homes, comfortable homes would have no rental value. They 
could not be sold for enough money to pay the government tax 
on them. It would, in the end, bankrupt the government. The 
single tax delusion can do nothing to prevent the Impending 
Crisis. There is no relief for the working class while the pres- 
ent anti-economic system continues. 

To the average individual, the present amount of taxation 
would be insignificant, if he was not in a condition of poverty 
where every penny counts. The advocates of the single tax must 
believe that the day of small things shall forever continue; since 
the readjustment of the expenditure of a few cents per day, per 
capita of the population, is the only economic salvation which 
they can promise. 

The Elimination of Middlemen. — It is true that labor is 
wasted by middlemen ; but, waste of labor is everywhere. The 
present economic system demands it- The inexhaustible labor 
power of steam and electricity is being wasted wherever it is 
idle, and wherever, with our present knowledge of applied science, 
it could be employed. We will show in Chapter VII, Part I, 
and Chapter IV, Part II, that machinery might be employed to 
do practically all manner of labor. But it is comparatively 
idle, because it cannot be permitted to interfere with the nor- 
mal amount of scarcity, upon which prices depend. Under the 
present economic system it seems wise to waste a vast amount 
of labor; therefore we should not fret if a good amount of 
labor is wasted for us by middlemen. They render a service to 
all of us by keeping themselves out of mischief and helping us 
to avoid the awful consequences of overproduction in the 
presence of the unsupplied wants of those whose toil has pro- 
duced the goods that they cannot buy. 

Do middlemen cause goods to be scarce by handling them? 
If they do not, they do not affect the price of goods. The price 
would be the same if there were no middlmen. The present 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 33 

economic system is a system of special privileges. When the 
reader thinks of a rule of business, let him think also of what 
its effect would be if applied to all men. 

If a few families in the city unite to buy apples by the car 
load, directly from farmers, they can buy them at less than retail 
price in the city. If some farmers arrange to ship apples 
directly to some families in the city they can get a higher price 
than is paid by the middlemen. This narrow and self-centered 
view creates the delusion that, the cost of living would be less 
for all consumers and that prices would be higher for all pro- 
ducers, if all middlemen were thrown out of their present em- 
ployment. The Farmers' Alliance, however, is not organized for 
the purpose of causing foodstuffs to be cheaper for consumers 
in the city, but to increase the seUing price for farmers. Con- 
sumers' Leagues in the city are not organized for the purpose 
of paying higher prices to farmers and other producers. These 
organizations are demanding lower freight rates which would 
impoverish railroads (whether governmentally controlled or 
otherwise) and cause their employees to strike for the privilege 
of a decent existence. Should all middlemen be eliminated and 
all producers and consumers deal with each other, directly, — ^the 
former demanding the highes,t price the market will bear, the lat- 
ter paying the least possible price, — the compromise price would 
be only high enough to cause producers to continue to produce 
the goods, and low enough to cause consumers to continue to buy 
them. That is what is occurring now. The middlemen get a 
living out of the products they handle and we have not heard of 
anyone who proposes to kill them. If they should be suddenly 
put to death, the present quantity of goods in the markets would 
be greater in proportion to the number of the population ; prices 
would fall; production would halt until "consumption over- 
takes production", and the former degrees of scarcity of goods 
in proportion to the population should be restored. This would 
be the situation if there were no middlemen. 

The millions of middlemen, including all who are directly 



34 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

or indirectly employed by them, turning to producing shoes 
would cause a tremendous "glut" in the shoe business. As a rule, 
shoe factories now cannot run at their full capacity, and often 
have to still further limit their output to hold up the prices and 
scarcity of shoes. Considering any other occupation, the effect 
would be the same. If they should become common laborers, 
competing for a chance to work, their distress would cause them 
to underbid the lowest wage and to increase the number of un- 
employed and of the occasionally employed, beyond the needs 
of capitalists in the busy seasons. Being of more than ordinary 
intelligence, they would manage bread riots much more effectively 
than they are managed by hungry low wage earners now. Under 
present conditions, (adjusted to prices, profits and wages), mid- 
dlemen and those who are directly and indirectly employed by 
them do the least possible harm in their present occupation. Some 
of them are quite comfortable, haunted only by the ever-present 
fear of being driven out of business by their competitors, 
into poverty and unemployment. Why should we desire to m- 
crease their trouble, when it would not diminish our own ! The 
elimination of middlemen cannot save us in the Impending 
Crisis. 

A Minimum Wage and a Higher Standard of Living. — 
"Increase wages ; and establish a minimum below which they shall 
not be permitted to go !" Each man sees that the special privilege 
of enjoying high wages, while paying low prices for everything 
he buys, would be an advantage to himself and family. But he 
forgets that he and his family are not all mankind ; and that if 
all prices were much reduced for all buyers, there would be a 
universal strike against a great reduction in all wages, and 
there would be panic, riot and bloodshed which would become 
uncomfortable to his home circle.* 



* [If one seriously believes that a minimum wage law or any kind 
of legislative control or regulation of either wages or the cost of living 
can lessen poverty for the maj ority, let him read how it has been tried 
and found utterly worthless no longer ago than 1601 in England. (See 
Six Centuries of Work and Wages, Thoroold Rogers, pp. 414 to 441). 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 35 

Not only minimum wages, but all manner of wages and 
prices for both labor and products, must be abolished — if we 
would save ourselves in the Impending Crisis. 

The steps by which to accomplish this vast reform are 
described elsewhere in this book. 

Trusts. — Labor, is one of the commodities offered for sale 
in the markets ; and labor trusts are compelled to imitate the other 
trusts. The price of the commodity, named labor, goes up and 
down in obedience to the law of prices which governs swine and 
the foodstuffs that fatten them. Labor and pork are desired 
commodities, and their price advances when the quantity offered 
for sale in the market diminishes. 

Labor trusts, like other trusts, may lessen the cost of pro- 
ducing their commodity by spending less for food, clothing and 
shelter, and thereby get a margin of profit between the cost of 
production and the selling price. If they should all do this, it 
would not be long until the capitalist trusts would see an oppor- 
tunity to increase their profits, for a time, either by directly pay- 
ing less wages, or indirectly charging higher prices for goods ; 
thus diminishing wages by increasing the cost of living. Cap- 
ital, of course, , would finally defeat itself in this attempt to in- 
crease profits, although it would hold down wages. When the 
purchasing power of the many is reduced, the selling power of 
the few is also reduced ; for they cannot sell more goods than 
can be bought. 

The trusts not only seek to reduce the cost of production, 
but they find it necessary to limit the output. When there are 
too many factories producing a given commodity the trust pro- 
cures the factories and throws some of them upon the junk-heap. 
Thus they limit the output, and prices rise on account of the 



While consenting to a system of economics which is an adjustment to 
scarcity, and, which will not permit more than 95 cents worth per capita 
daily ration of products to be produced and distributed without causing 
"overproduction" and a relapse, it ought to be self evident that poverty 
must be endured by the majority — W. H. T.]- 



36 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

increased scarcity of that commodity. Labor trusts must also 
imitate the other trusts when prices for their commodity are 
falHng on account of its quantity in the market. The labor 
trust must diminish the output. The commodity, called 
"labor," must become scarcer in order to command a higher 
price. 

But, work-people cannot cause their labor to become scarcer 
without becoming scarcer themselves. They must have a chance 
to work in order to live. War, riots, dissipation, suicide and 
crime would diminish the number of work-people for sale in the 
labor market ; this would bless the survivors ; for it would en- 
able them to sell themselves in the labor market at a higher price. 

If, in the Impending Crisis, half of the working class should 
slaughter each other, because of their disagreement concerning 
the method of getting common necessaries, they would give 
the only relief to the other half of the working class which is 
possible, under the present economic system. The real wages 
of the survivors would be increased, for a time, on account 
of the scarcity of working men. 

Restrict Foreign Immigration. — Certainly. While we are 
under the present brutal system of economic anarchy, we should 
keep out foreign labor ; for an essential condition of the market 
value of labor, is its scarcity. Labor has been scarce in this 
new country of America, compared with the older countries, 
and has therefore commanded a higher price. Drive back the 
suffering multitudes of "pauper laborers !" If they continue to 
come here they will produce more goods than they will be per- 
mitted to consume ! Thus they will increase the quantity and 
lower the prices of goods in our markets, and thereby indirectly 
lower the wages of all of us who help to produce them. And 
they will underbid us for a chance to work until we would quit 
our jobs rather than to endure their lower standards of living. 
If the incoming tide of foreign immigration is not regulated so 
as to come more slowly, — that we may become accustomed to 
being "pauper laborers" ourselves, — men will break many win- 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 37 

dows and heads with brickbats, and blow up many - buildings 
with dynamite, and thus cause the whole country to become more 
wretched than before! 

For the same reason, we have been compelled to keep out 
of our industries (especially those industries which produce con- 
sumption goods) most O'f the steam and electricity which have 
been offering their services and are more than equal to all 
the power of all the foreigners on earth. They, like foreign 
immigrants, would have thrown us out of our jobs and have com- 
pelled us to further underbid each other for a chance to work 
and live. Chinamen, on the Pacific Coast, have been mobbed, 
who, in their poverty and distress came seeking work, and who 
must underbid us, if they overcome the disadvantage of their 
foreign tongue and ways. We act like brutes! but a brutal 
economic system compels us to do so ; when they are added to 
the number of work-people we are not as- scarce as we were 
before, our price in the labor market falls, and w^ have 
wives and little ones for whom we are willing to die and whom 
we would defend against all the world. For that reason, (i. e. 
the sacrifice for loved ones) men are infinitely nobler than 
their system of business. 

Working men once opposed the introduction of steam power 
into manufacture for the same reason that causes them to ob- 
ject to the importation of foreign labor. They ceased to destroy 
machines when they observed that the tremendous change of the 
transportation facilities and the change to a ''factory system" 
afforded an opportunity to work. It did not concern them to 
know that such a job, though vast, could be finished. 

In the chapter on The Impending Crisis we will show how 
the labor, displaced by steam power, was re-employed without 
causing a collapse of the present economic system ; and that it 
did not increase the average amount of consumption goods dis- 
tributed among the common people. Around labor-saving 
machinery, men will again be found contending; for, in its 



38 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

construction, they have displaced themselves more effectually 
than an army of foreigners could. 

Under The Other Economics, as we shall explain in other 
chapters, there would be an unlimited demand for more labor- 
saving machinery and more laborers to shorten the hours of 
labor, and a way provided for the employment of both. 

Protective Tariff and Free Trade. — There is free trade in 
labor and the introduction of labor-saving machinery into indus- 
tries ; therefore protective tariffs for capitalists, do not protect 
work-people in general. This whole controversy relates to a very 
small matter. Our foreign trade is insignificant when the 
interests of the whole population of our land are considered. 

Foreign Trade. — This is a costly delusion. Because of it 
armies and navies exist. A dispute between two Christian ( ?) 
civilized nations, over a very little foreign trade, is liable to 
cause war in which' battleships, each costing over a million 
dollars and thousands of cheap men of the working class de- 
stroy each other. The free traders who are financially in- 
terested in th'.e bloody quarrel, and the money kings, who 
finance the hellish enterprise, sit in their splendid homes 
and offices, far from the danger, and read the latest news 
from the distant scene of destruction and watch- its effect 
on the stock exchange. This entire business is mostly an 
heredity insanity — except for a few men. Let the reader con- 
sider the following parable: 

O^ce two men were left alone on an island in the midst of 
the ocean. Each of them had a thousand dollars and a year's 
supply of all needed goods. They decided to live on opposite 
sides of a river that flowed through the island, and to make money 
by trading with each other. They built a boat and engaged in 
trade — each of them exporting and importing goods across the 
river that separated them. One of them, who greatly loved 
money, managed to get a cash balance of trade in his favor at 
the end of each day. The trader on one side of the river was 
daily getting more money while having less goods. The other 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 39 

was daily getting more goods, but his money was diminishing. 
So they grew rich in trade ! The one increasing in money and the 
other in goods ; until at the end of one hundred days the trader 
on one side had all the money and the other had all the goods. 
The one who had all the goods was penniless, — but com- 
fortable. The other was rich in money which he could not eat 
or use for clothing, and so he died as the fool dieth. 

' The devotee of Mammon did not know that the "daily 
balance of trade in is favor" was not a sign of increasing pros- 
perity, but, a sign of increasing poverty. If this river is 
widened until it is the ocean, and if these men are two nations, 
the results of foreign trade as far as the majority is concerned, 
are the same. 

Some foreign exchange is demanded by brotherly kindness 
between nations, on account of the unequal distribution of the 
bounties of nature. Very little of the present exchange of 
products between nations is needed on that account. Our nation 
has the sources of life and wealth within its own borders, and 
it is not engaged in foreign trade for the benevolent purpose of 
saving foreign nations the trouble of developing their own re- 
sources. And our nation, i. e., the big crowd, is not engaged 
in foreign trade. A few capitalists who are engaged in that busi- 
ness are not our nation. The boys who work naked in bleaching 
vats in some of our textile mills are not engaged in foreign 
trade, although, some of the goods they are helping to produce 
are traded in foreign countries. 

The total amount of foreign trade is insignificant when com- 
pared with the total population. Ten per cent, profit on the 
foreign trade of the United States in 1910 would have amounted 
to only about a half cent a day per capita of our population. 
Men cannot find a safe investment where they can get a guaran- 
teed ten per cent, profit in any ordinary business. That profit 
on foreign trade, even if it existed temporarily, would draw the 
world's money into it until the profits would fall. Nations can- 
not and do not make money out of each other by foreign trade. 



40 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

A few individuals, only, make the profit at the expense of the 
multitude. A few capitalists in our country who are engaged 
in foreign trade, for example, export cotton and trade it for 
silk ; but the average cotton grower does not get any of the silk ; 
he gets only a little money, barely enough to enable him to exist 
and grow cotton. The profits on foreign trade are obtained out 
of the toil and poverty of our own workpeople. The profit 
does not come out oj foreigners. 

However, most of the bloody battles between Christian na- 
tions have been fought over that fraction of a cent. It occupies 
the center of the stage in politics. Politicians juggle it until, in 
the eyes of the people, it is changed from minus to plus and mar- 
velously magnified. They promise that if elected to ofiice, they 
will cause it to greatly enrich the nation and that workingmen 
shall have a share of it. The politicians seems to be like monkeys ; 
unconscious of the meaning of the play, managed in the interest 
of a few financiers, and seem to be prompted primarily by the 
hope that their own unsatisfied wants shall be better supplied 
when they are elected to ofiice. 

They are not fools ! Neither are the few financiers who 
manage them. Many of them temporarily abolish poverty for 
themselves, but not the fear of becoming poor. The working 
class act like fools by being deceived by them — world without 
end — bearing all the expenses and shedding their own blood 
when the managers desire it to change market quotations in the 
stock exchange. But there are certain indications that the com- 
mon people are becoming dangerously intelligent. Further jug- 
gling with that fraction of a cent, (taken indirectly from them 
by means of foreign trade), cannot forever deceive the work- 
people nor save us in The Impending Crisis. 

Let the Working Class Become More Efficient. — Capital- 
ists preach this gospel of efficiency with increasing zeal when they 
are preparing to throw a part of their employees out of work 
and slow down "until consumption overtakes production." While 
the factory continues to run, the owner con get more profit on 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 41 

goods, per piece, if wage earners turn out more goods in a given 
time and thus reduce the labor cost of the goods. The owner of 
the factory could by this means undersell rivals and drive 
them out of business and get their trade away from them ; pro- 
vided, the employees of other like factories do not become equal- 
ly efficient. 

Labor Unions object to what is known as ''speeding," be- 
cause they know that if they should turn out more product per 
day it would shorten the intervals between the periods of so- 
called over-production, vdien many of them are thrown out of 
employment. If a factory may run at less than its capacity, to 
avoid losing profits, (by producing too much goods for the mar- 
ket), why may not factory hands run at less than their full 
capacity, to avoid unemployment and loss of wages? There is 
something devilish in this gospel of efficiency! excusable only 
because we are in subjection to a subhuman economic system. 

Let the Working Class Become More Moral. — This eco- 
nomic delusion is popular in wealthy religious circles of society. 
If all working men should exclude strong drink and hats from 
their standard of living, the demand of capitalists for "more 
profits" and "less expense" would still continue. Working men, 
driven by their own wants, would underbid each other until 
wages would be reduced equal ^to the amount previously ex- 
pended for strong drink and hats. Th'e most pious see no sin 
in buying goods (from foreign countries) which are cheaper 
than they otherwise would be because the toilers who produce 
them used neither strong drink nor hats. They see no sin in 
buying goods at a bargain ; although the greater their bargain 
in cloths, for example, the less the merchant must pay for the 
production of clothing ; and the less the poor working woman 
receives for her stitching, the less her standard of life becomes 
— no matter how high her morals may be. 

If more workmen were drunkards the economic effect would 
be that the wages of total abstainers would be increased. They 
would be scarcer and their services would bring higher prices. 



42 • EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

Every workman who is a temperance reformer is uncon- 
sciously trying to reduce his own wages ; but it is the present 
economic system that is immoral. It being adjusted to perpet- 
uating poverty and scarcity, the morals of men can no more re- 
verse its evil effects, than simple goodness can propel an 
automobile forward, when it is adjusted to a reverse gear. The 
intelligence of men, however, if directed toward reversing the 
root-principle of present economics, as we shall suggest in this 
work, could reverse the present evils of society arising from 
economic sources. 

Profit Sharing.— We will show in the chapter on Profits 
that the total average profit made by capitalists is too small to 
perceptibly relieve the masses, if equally divided among them. 
Under a universal system of profit sharing, the real profit which 
goes to capital would not be diminished. Normal profits would 
be increased by the amount taken from wages and returned to 
wage earners, under the name of profits. If everybody is getting 
profits, everybody is getting profits out of himself. He cannot 
grow rich by taking something from himself and giving it back 
again. The scarcity of goods would still be necessary to main- 
tain "prices", out of which must come both profits and wages. 

Government Control. — Government control of industries 
could not increase the quantity of goods offered for sale in the 
markets without lowering prices, profits and wages. It is com- 
mon knowledge that Capital and Labor refuse to work when 
profits and wages are much reduced. This delusion leaves the 
increased quantity of goods to rot in the places of storage, un- 
sold ; while the former proportion of toilers are in distress be- 
cause they cannot obtain them. If the government could fix a 
minimum wage from which other wages grade upward, the 
greater cost of producing and distributing goods would be added 
to their prices, and wages, in proportion to the cost of living, 
would be the same as before. 

The Almighty Himself could not so control the present 
economic system as to mitigate its evil effects. He would 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 43 

doubtless abolish the system and adopt another which would 
be adjusted to the opposite principles, — that of producing 
goods for use and not for a selling price. And this course, 
alone, will remedy our confused and blundering system of in- 
dustrial warfare. 

Government Ownership. — ^Under the present economic sys- 
tem, goverment ownership of the means of production and 
distribution could not diminish the poverty of the working 
class. Giving steady employment to all, and producing enough 
common necessaries for all who labor, would throw the gov- 
ernment into a panic- Common necessaries would not be 
scarce enough to command a price. Profits and wages can- 
not be paid by magic. If common necessaries could not 
command a price, the government, without income, could pay 
no wages. If they continued to be produced and distributed 
men would have to work without wages. The whole 
work of producing and distributing goods would have to be 
donated. That would destroy the present economic system. 
After a comprehensive survey of all economic experiments, 
under the present system, reaching back to the earliest period 
of recorded history, we are of the opinion that this, after all, 
is the only way out. 

Government ownership, as it must be under the present 
economic system, is being tested now. The poor woman 
whose home is a rented shanty on a back alley, who is 
struggling like a slave to feed, clotjhe and shelter her little 
children by getting down on her knees to scrub the floors 
of a million dollar post office building is employed in a 
business that is owned by the government. Electric machines 
exist and are well known which would enable her, without 
hard labor, to do the work of many scrub women. But she is 
cheaper than the machine. Money is precious and machines are 
costly, but this woman has little or no money value and the party 
in power got into power by promising to reduce government ex- 



44 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

penses. It is a saving to engage the woman in preference to 
purchasing the machine. 

To expect the government to act otherwise under exist- 
ing economic conditions, is to expect the government to show 
less business sense than any ordinary day laborer. 

The government would become bankrupt, if it would not 
continue prices and scarcity of goods in the markets especially 
if government employees demanded pay for their labor. It 
could not perpetuate scarcity unless that scarcity was born 
by the majority of the people. Government ownership alone, 
cannot save our nation in the Impending Crisis- 

Socialism. — [Socialism as advocated at present, is not an- 
other system of economics. It suggests nothing, more or less, 
than another attempt to readjust to the primitive ''root-prin- 
ciple" of grasping. Tihere could be no other system of eco- 
nomics unless that system be an adjustment to the opposite 
principle — that of giving' 

Aim to get wealth by universal giving, is the vision which 
Socialism needs. Without this vision there is no hope for 
Socialism, or for the further progress of mankind. 

Socialism would socialize the tools of production, but 
not the products. 

Socialism, of course, does not advocate a division of 
wealth. "The socalist program does not deal zvith consumable 
wealth but with productive wealth; the socialist would socialize 
the tools of production, not the products'', (Morris Hillquit in 
"The Appeal to Reason,'' July 20, 1912). 

No one today owns the ocean. As an instrument for the 
production of fish for the markets, it is thoroughly "social- 
lized." Yet, as shown in Chapter II, iPart I, in Lon- 
don Fish Markets, under competition for products, sometimes 
a part of the supply of fish is destroyed in order that the re- 
maining amount would bring a higher price and yield a profit 
to those engaged in the fish industry. Too many iish are a 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 45 

calamity to fish, vendors. And the effect would be the same 
if all tools were socialized. 

Simply "socializing" the instruments of production and 
distribution would result in no greater income than at pres- 
ent. Like the fishermen, the Socialists would find that under 
the competitive law, in relation to products, they cauld receive 
no income for products unless they could receive some form 
of price for their products; and' that no^ price could be re- 
ceived unless products were scarce for others. The struggle 
to keep products scarce for "the other fellow" in order to 
realize an individual advantage in "income," would be as in- 
tense under Socialism as at present, and the various degrees 
of poverty would have to be endured by the masses, as here- 
tofore. 

When all workmen are competing for products and giving 
little in order to get much, or in other words holding fast to 
all that they produced, the economic effect upon society would 
be the same as Capitalism. 

"Every man shall get what he produces," is a common 
delusion of Socialism. The Author of this work will show 
that without the aid of others, rhan produces little or nothing. 
Therefore, according to the* Socialistic rule, he would get little 
or nothing. It is shown, in Chapter IV, Part I, th'at, if the 
Socialist should get an equal share of all that is produced it 
would not exceed 95 cents per capita per day, and that under 
competition for products more than that amount cannot be pro- 
duced and distributed, without causing a so-called "overpro- 
duction." If competition is still retained by Socialists in re- 
lation to "consumable wealth", inequalities would be inevi- 
table. Each Socialist who imagines that a greater amount 
of products would be produced and distributed to him, if the 
tools of production and distribution were socialized, forgets 
that the tools will not run themselves without the aid of men ; 
and that men, competing for the products which they produce 
by the aid of tools are not thinking about giving them away or 



46 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

permitting any distribution of their respective products that 
might tend to lessen their individual income. 

Competition, in the struggle to give nothing, is no better 
than competitive grasping, and the results would be about 
the same. 

Capitalist and Proletariat, profits and surplus-profits, ex- 
change-values, prices, v^ages and income, private rights to 
the means of existence, a scarce medium of exchange, etc., 
are not causes; these are but a few of the effects of the law of 
evolution adjusting production and distribution of products to 
the root-principle of grasping. Even though all these present 
evil effects were abolished by some miracle, and men yet re- 
tained the fundamental principle of "giving little" in order to 
get much, the evil effects would immediately return in some 
form. Other forces, in the nature of mental or physical power, 
cunning or co-operative endeavor, would create and perpetu- 
ate all the evils of the present system of economics and doom 
the majority to a life of drudgery and want. The strong or 
efficient man, struggling to get much products while giving 
little, would take the place of our Capitalist; ability or labor 
power would assume the function of present prices for goods; 
and the difference of hours in favor of the strong or efficient 
would become a margin of profit to them, and there would 
evolve a class struggle and all the various degrees of poverty 
which men have known during the past history of the race. 

Man is a social creature. Without the aid of Society, he 
can neither exist nor attain wealth. The wealth of collective 
society must determine the individual wealth of the majority 
of its members. The struggle of each unit of society to give 
little to collective wealth can result in nothing but collective 
poverty. When society is thus improverished, the majority of 
its members must endure that poverty. Ome would think that 
the truth of this statement was apparent — even to the simple. 
But this is not so. This economic truth must be one of the 
deepest and most subtle of all scientific, philosophical, political 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 47 

or religious assertions, for it has successfully evaded the men- 
tal microscopes of the greatest minds in all ages with the ex- 
ception of Jesus, the Carpenter's Son, and, as far as we have 
been able to discover, the author of The Other Economics. — 
W. H. T.] 

Communism. — [This delusion is not another system of 
economics. It is a form of trust, which has hitherto been 
closely related to agriculture, wherein certain mxandatory re- 
straints and self-denials, imposed upon its members, enabled 
them to imderlive surrounding society. Chinamen also have un- 
derlived workmen in this country and saved money. 

Should a large manufacturing establishment decide to in- 
clude all its employees into equal partnership, it would resemble 
communism, but would not change the system of prices, profits 
and wages which ruled the world at large- It would not effect 
the poverty of the majority of mankind if all industries were in 
separate communes, selling their products to each other. 

A single family is a Commune to the extent of its members, 
and might exist without economic intercourse with other fam- 
ilies; but the existence of its members would be little above 
savagery. Economic interchange with all families is necessary 
to any one family's well being. That economic interchange has 
always been based on the principle of grasping or eco- 
nomic-antagonism — family against family — with the inevit- 
able result of poverty for the majority. Communism — a 
larger family — has always retained this competitive business 
principle when dealing with all other families. As a result. She 
has robbed her members of all the benefits of civilization not 
closely connected with their respective vocation or with the 
limited bounties of nature to which they had access. 

The endeavor of Communists to adjust this mode of life 
to the limited resources of their trust, and thus compete with 
civilization about them, has tended to repress, rather than ex- 
pand, the higher natures of the members — reducing all to a 
common level. 



48 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

Communism, as hitherto conceived and tested, had neither 
the facilities nor the economic principle by which to produce 
and distribute wealth to all. It aims, not to make a virtue of 
wealth or a high standard of life, but to adjust to poverty. In 
this attempt, however, some groups have proven more suc- 
cessful than any other method of adjustment to scarcity now 
being tested in civilization. — W. H. T.I 

Under the present system, all rules of success in the 
struggle to escape from poverty would cause universal bank- 
ruptcy and unemployment, if obeyed by everybody. The pres 
ent economic system was not adjusted to everybody. It was 
adjusted to that insane principle of grasping which perpet- 
uates poverty for all but a few. It has never failed in ac- 
complishing its purpose. Its uniform success in all past cen- 
turies is sufficient proof that it cannot fail to hold the ma- 
jority down in poverty through all coming centuries. There 
is no hope for the working class or for any nation, regard- 
less of its form of government, except by the destruction of 
the present economic system, and the adoption of another 
which is not governed by the principle that scarcity of the 
things that people want is the one objective condition of 
value. The seeming progress in civilizations has consisted 
In causing people to want more of life and more of goods that 
sustain it and in causing the latter to be scarce ; thus breeding the 
discontent that at last results In destruction. 

The maintenance of "scarcity", especially since wants 
have become more highly civilized and Intense, and since, of 
late, machinery so greatly increases the productivity of labor 
and education is common, — has become our great prob- 
lem. "Overproduction" Is a constant menace. We are al- 
ways on the edge of It. Thie great Industrial combinations, 
or the trusts, are evidences of this truth. They are organized 
for no other purpose than to limit the output and hold up 
prices and scarcity of all kinds of goods which the people 



COMMON ECONOMIC DELUSIONS 49 

want. If these big comtyinations for limiting the output 
should be broken up into little ones, by acts of Congress, and 
the output should not be limited, and our new steam power 
should break loose and produce an abundance of common 
necessaries, the bottom would be knocked out of prices, profits 
and wages. Capital and labor would refuse to work. 

The problem is a fearful one ! 

How can we avoid producing goods enough to make the 
common people comfortable! 

When we approach that amount of production it is "over- 
production", and the present economic system goes into con- 
vulsions and threatens to expire! 

Many of the common people are beginning to see that 
there is no way of deliverance for them, except through the 
death of something which, a& yet, they dimly comprehend. 



CHAPTER IV 



PRESENT PBODUCTION 



In 1910 the total money value of products from all sources, 
as given in the United States Census reports, was $31,435,796,- 
869.00, including cost of raw materials. Adding $1,000,000,- 
000.00, to allow for products consumed and not appearing, we 
get the huge sum of $32,435,796,869.00. 

But who can understand such a meaningless row of figures ! 

If we divide it by the population of that date (93.4 million) 
and by 365 days of the year, we reduce it to a sum that we can 
understand when we go to buy a shirt or a good meal — 95 cents 
per day, "surplus-profits" included, if equally divided. 

Over that American ration of 95 cents per day about one 
hundred million men, women and children fought and lied, 
traded and grafted, juggled and exchanged. It was this 95 cents 
per day per capita which paid for armies and navies, the legis- 
latures and asylums, the penitentiaries and Congress. It was 
out of this 95 cents daily ration that all the big fortunes were 
skimmed and the banks supported. It paid the preacher, the 
teacher and the undertaker and clubbed the "wolf" withal. 

That was all that these expenditures could come out of,' for, 
that was all that was produced. And our system is so nicely ad- 
justed to perpetuating scarcity that more than 95 cents per day 
per capita could not be produced and distributed without causing 
"overproduction", when mills would close down and crops rot in 
the fields.^ 

In 1880 the daily ration was 55 cents, in 1900 it was 67^ 



1 Distribution of Products, Atkinson. 

50 



PRESENT PRODUCTION 51 

cents and now it is 95, which, by the way, indicates that products 
are becoming scarcer and that their ''money value" is swelHng. 

If our diet could consist of ''money value", in lieu of food, 
and if we could wear "money value", in various styles, instead 
of clothes, the increase of the money value of our daily ration 
from 55 cents to 95 would give us cause for great rejoicing. But 
the fact that m^at products had a money value of 300 million 
more in 1900 than in 1896 did not indicate that we produced 
more sheep, cattle and hogs, but that we produced 19 million 
head less. On account of our success in perpetuating scarcity the 
"money value" of the following products has increased during 
the last ten-year census period as follows: Sugar, 60%; butter, 
34% ; milk, 35% ; flour, 35% ; potatoes, 46% ; eggs, 47% ; lard, 
57% ; hens, 59% ; sirloin steak, 62% ; ham, 63% ; rib roast, 63% ; 
corn meal, 64% ; round steak, 86% ; smoked bacon, 100% ; pork 
chops, 105%. 

If angels from heaven should pay all expenses of the gov- 
ernment and keep business going, without accepting any profits, 
and give an equal share of the wealth produced to each in- 
habitant it would only be enough to hire cheap board and lodging. 
By economizing on that insignificant income, as though Nature 
were a pauper, we manage to exist and give comfortable exist- 
ence to a few of the fittest fighters. 

In 1910 the total money value of all farm property and the 
total capital in manufacturing, was $63,082,246,154.00. This 
amount divided by the population is about $605.00. Five per 
cent, dividends on this capital would be nine cents a day for each 
inhabitant and would relieve poverty to that extent if equally 
distributed, provided: some genius could figure how everybody 
could equally receive dividends and pay them at the same time 
to any advantage. The fact is there would be no dividends in 
that case and all this capital would have no money value on that 
account. 

When we include in the total wealth of our country the 
money value of the methods by which profits and wages are ob- 



52 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

tained out of products of industry after they are produced (by 
taking a portion of them from the many and giving it to the 
few), the estimated wealth of our country in 1912 was $130,- 
000,000,000. This was about $1,368 per capita of the population. 
Five per cent, interest on this amount, if by some miracle all 
could receive interest when no one is paying interest, would give 
19c a day to each inhabitant. This becomes a good measuring 
rod by which to gauge the importance of the political issues 
of our day to the average voter. 

But most of this alleged wealth is invisible and intangible. 
The larger part of it does not exist, but may exist at some future 
time, for a few people. The money value of a house or a lot 
depends on the future products of industry that may be obtained 
from others by means of it, indirectly, in the form of rent. This 
is true of all rentable property. If it could not be used as a 
means of levying tribute on the products of the future toils of 
others, it would have no money value. Much of the estimated 
wealth of our nation consists in the ability of some men to get 
possession of things which others possess. This is poverty for 
the other men. It does not add to the total wealth. A dollar 
is nothing but a dollar even when it is transferred from one 
pocket to another. 

A boy has a hundred marbles. Another boy who has none 
knows a game by which he can get possession of those marbles. 
He plays the game and wins the marbles in half an hour. There 
are other boys who have marbles and he can likewise get posses- 
sion of theirs. The earning power of his scheme is two thousand 
marbles in ten hours, or six hundred thousand a year. This 
earning power capitalized at five per cent- is twelve million mar- 
bles. He has become a multimillionaire, not in dollars, but in 
marbles, and would be so rated in stock exchanges and Census 
Reports, if marbles were money. The scheme, when played and 
capitalized, has not increased the number of marbles. The same 
is true when the same game is played with wheat, houses, fac- 
tories, railroads, or any other kind of property. A very large 



PRESENT PRODUCTION 53 

part of the estimated wealth of our nation consists in the cap- 
itaHzation of the earning power of the methods by which some 
men can get possession of the property in the hands of other 
men. This neither adds to nor subtracts from the total real 
wealth of the country. The men who are thus playing marbles 
"for keeps" are simply idle. Perhaps we can better afford to 
have them idle than to have them come to the factories where 
we are at work and compete for a chance to take our jobs! 

Recently a careful estimate of the amount of luxuries en- 
joyed by the people of the United States was published.^ It 
was a rebuke to our extravagance and an attempt to show us the 
cause of the higher cost of living. The list of luxuries included 
European trips, pleasure excursions, theatres, yachts, automo- 
biles, carriages, pianos, talking machines, liquors, tobacco, soda 
water, fireworks, silk, toys, candy, perfumes and about every- 
thing above common necessaries. The fearful total for luxuries 
was two thousand million dollars. That seemingly infinite ex- 
penditure for luxuries was less than seven cents a day for each 
inhabitant of our country. This seven cents a day was not 
equally distributed. For every person who had a two-thousand- 
dollar automobile there must be more than seventy-five other 
persons who are deprived of all luxuries for a whole year. The 
money value of the poverty of those who do not have luxuries 
gives the market value to the luxuries which they struggle for 
but cannot obtain. The scarcity of the luxuries which people 
want is the one objective condition of their value. If everybody 
had this little seven cents and spent it for luxuries "the richest 
nation on earth" should not scold him for his extravagance. 

An eminent writer on economics shows us that the cost of 
war and warfare to the United States from 1897 to 1905 was 
nine hundred million dollars.^ This was about three cents a week 
per capita of the population for that period. The luxury of 
killing people, and of being in readiness for that diversion, should 



2 The Technical World, Oct. 1909. 

3 Facts and Figures the Basis of Economic Science, Atkinson, p. 163. 



54 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

perhaps not cause us to* mention that little three cents. Some 
would give three cents a week to save people from being killed. 
This is as yet the day of small things, and three cents a week 
per capita of the population is a matter of great national concern. 
Any political party can ride into power on the plausible promise 
to save a small part of that amount in our national expenditures. 

Three cents a day contributed by each inhabitant of our 
country to one thousand men would make each of them a mil- 
lionaire in one year. That is more than our annual output of 
millionaires. Probably they would be worth that much to us if 
by withholding this little contribution we should throw ourselves 
out of employment. Look at it as we will, that little three cents 
is too small to quarrel about, unless the poverty of the average 
inhabitant is much greater than the comfortable few are accus- 
tomed to imagine. 

A panic, following a period of more than ordinary activity 
in business, results in a general demand for payment of debts. 
The extraordinary business activity results in an increased quan- 
tity of goods in the markets which lowers prices. Whatever may 
be the nature of the medium of exchange, the greater abundance 
of goods in the markets lowers real prices for goods by increas- 
ing the purchasing power of a day^s work. In relation to goods 
the amount of poverty for the average man is beginning to 
diminish. This is the beginning of the panic. Lower prices for 
products results in lower prices for instruments of production. 
When prices for goods fall so low that selling the greater amount 
of goods at the lower price gives less profit than selling a less 
amount at a higher price, profits are diminished by the lower 
price. Smaller profits in business cause the capital employed in 
it to "shrink" in estimated value. When much consumption 
goods must be given for little money, it will not be long until 
much land and much machinery must be given for little money. 
Mortgages become less secure when the money value of property 
covered by them is shrinking. This causes a general demand for 
the payment of debts. 



PRESENT PRODUCTION 55 

According to popular opinion, much of the capital of our 
country vanishes during a panic. People seem to imagine that 
when land is twenty-five dollars an acre there is only half as 
much land as there was when the price was fifty dollars. They 
imagine that a factory or a mine is less than it was when its 
value as estimated in money was greater. But one may search 
everywhere after a panic has greatly reduced estimated wealth 
and see no evidences of the destruction of material things. The 
mines and the factories all remain but they are taking a rest, 
having more products on hand than they can sell. The panic 
has not destroyed any real property. Many names and figures 
are different in certain books in banks, and some families who 
have previously lived in palaces have moved out and others 
moved in, but this neither increases or diminishes wealth. What 
was all the commotion of the panic about? Nothing: only the 
fact that the country was beginning to touch the tips of its fingers 
to the wealth that God Almighty had placed on earth in abun- 
dance for all. The normal degree of poverty was beginning to 
be disturbed for the masses of people. Too much was being 
produced and distributed. Therefore it was necessary to di- 
minish credits and demand payments in something that was very 
scarce for people, viz : money. Money, by virtue of its scarcity, 
legally maintained, causes the things exchanged to again become 
sufficiently scarce so that prices, profits, wages and poverty can 
continue as they were before the period of unusual prosperity. 
That wealth of the country as a whole , whidh diminishes as the 
income of the average inhabitant increases, is fictitious. There- 
fore the most of the estimated wealth of the United States, as 
well as other countries, is fictitious.* 



♦This accounts for the fact, to a large degree, that our government statistics 
showed in the year 1910 net deposits in all banks of nine billion dollars (8,975 
million) and only three billion real dollars in circulation or in the treasury 
(pp. 552 St. ab. 1910). The total wealth as heretofore mentioned is reckoned 
at present to be one hundred and thirty thousand million. If the medium of 
exchange is only nine thousand million, which is supposed to measure the 
exchange of wealth, the difference between the two sums would be the amount 
of wealth which would have no exchange value in any general settlement. That 
fictitious wealth or wealth "in the red" is $121,000 million or forty times 
more than all the money in circulation or in the treasury — [W- H- T.]. 



56 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

The products of industry are not changed in quaUty or 
amount by changes in their money values. A ton of iron is only 
a ton when it requires more money to buy it. If two men are 
on a barren island and each of them has a million dollars, and 
one of them is dying of hunger and has a cup of water while 
the other is dying of thirst and has a slice of bread, the one 
would give a million dollars for the cup of water and the other 
would give a million dollars for a slice of bread. In this market 
the total money value of a cup of water and a slice of bread 
is two million dollars, but the real wealth that concerns the world 
of human beings was only a cup of water and a slice of bread. 

In periods when politicians, newspapers and stock exchanges 
are boasting about the increased wealth of our country, the 
"means of life" are growing less for the average inhabita;nt. This 
may be "real wealth" for a few men who control public senti- 
ment and the politics of the nation, but their increased wealth 
has been obtained by increasing poverty for the majority. If 
we confine our thoughts to money, we can readily see, that, be- 
cause the per capita amount is small, no man can get possession 
of a million dollars unless a great many other people have less 
than the per capita amount of money in the country. The same 
result must occur in relation to all goods which are measured 
in money. 

Products are not increased or diminished by merely chang- 
ing their location. 

A hat is not more than a hat when it has been transported 
from one part of the world to another. If it becomes more than 
a hat when transported to the right locality, then our 95c per 
day of wheat, yards of cloth, automobiles and other products 
could be increased by the simple process of transporting them. 
It should be remembered also that desires alone have no money 
value, and that Census Reports do not include them in the esti- 
mated wealth of our country. A man may desire to be robbed 
in a fashionable and indirect manner, but the gratification of the 
desire has no market value. The one objective condition of value 



PRESENT PRODUCTION 57 

is the scarcity of the goods taken from him, whether they were 
taken with or without his consent. If we carry a ship load of 
wheat to a region where people are starving, we may cause them 
to give us all the money and other goods in their possession in 
exchange for our wheat, and thus return to our homes to receive 
the homage which wealth commands ; but the amount of products 
is not increased by this exchange. The ship load of wheat was 
not one grain more when it reached the homes of the hungry 
people. The desires of those people, who preferred the con- 
tinuance of the desperate struggle for existence to death by star- 
vation, were gratified, but desires alone have no money value. 
When the above transaction is finished nothing has been added 
to the total amount of products anywhere on the earth. We 
only discover that we have more than before, and that others 
have less. 

There would be but little exchange of products between na- 
tions if the object of exchange was a mutual saving of labor. 
Most nations have possession of a sufficient variety of sources 
of raw materials to be self-supporting. The more fortunate 
nations could save labor by consenting that the less fortunate 
should be permited to have access to the unused portions of the 
earth's surface. The transportation of goods to and fro in the 
United States in the interests of traders is largely a waste of 
labor, or would be if any form of idleness was not less disas- 
trous than is "overproduction" under the present system ad- 
justed, as it is, to perpetuating poverty. When a man in New 
Mexico wants shoes he hires men to carry his steer to Chicago 
where he hires men to butcher the animal. Then he engages 
men to carry the hide to some town in New England to be tanned. 
Then he pays men to carry the tanned hide to another locality 
in New England to be made into shoes, after which he hires 
men to carry the shoes to wholesale houses in New York and 
thence to other smaller wholesale establishments. Then he 
spends more money to carry the shoes back to a retail store in 



58 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

his own town in New Mexico. This kind of efficiency ( ?) and 
labor under our present system is harmless, because the vast 
multitudes of people, who are thus engaged, are not producers. 
If they were producers they would cause "overproduction", 
panic, and unemployment for those who are producing goods. 
Of course, under a more scientific system of business, steers could 
be butchered, hides could be tanned and shoes could be made in 
New Mexico. The labor wasted, as above described, would skin 
a vast number of steers and make a great number of shoes, but 
that would be the destruction of the shoe business under present 
conditions ; for shoes must be scarce for the average family. Men 
must make a desperate struggle to obtain them in order to hold 
up prices and keep the shoe business going. 

To supply the wants of those who produce the goods, is not 
the object of trade. If it were, capitalists in the hungry Orient 
would not have attempted to export pork to Chicago, and cap- 
italists in hungry Chicago would not export pork to the Orient. 
A vast amount of labor could be saved, and employed in produc- 
tive industries, by both parties supplying the wants of indus- 
trious people nearer home. But this sensible policy, as we have 
seen, would cause the collapse of the present economic system. 

Most of the estimated wealth of our country consists in the 
capitalization of the privilege of being respectably employed, 
while refraining from engaging in the production of consumption 
goods : which, if otherwise, would increase their quantity on the 
market and lower prices so that profits and wages would be 
destroyed. Tramps and loafers of all kinds also refrain from 
helping to cause a chronic state of "overproduction" and there- 
fore help to hold up wages by refusing to compete for a chance 
to work. If we believe in the nobility of our present system, we 
should be ashamed of our lack of appreciation of these most 
self-sacrificing public benefactors. China seems, long ago, to 
have appreciated the value of the idle in lessening competition; 
for as early as the year 407 B. C. she prohibited any officer of 



PRESENT PRODUCTION 59 

the government from transacting business for gain, during his 
term of office.* 

The property of the Steel Trust is capitaUzed at $1,400,000,- 
000. This includes ore deposits estimated at one thousand mil- 
lion tons, and capitalized at eight hundred million dollars-^ We 
see that more than one-half of the property of the Steel Trust 
is not a product of human industry. Neither we nor our ances- 
tors produced the ore deposits. Land is not a product of human 
labor. When we have a monopoly of it we can compel other 
men to work for us to avoid starvation. This is wealth for us 
for we can sell our special privilege, but it is not wealth to those 
who must give us their labor to avoid starvation. The thousand 
million tons of iron ore will be mostly unused when the present 
owners and present generation are dead. Take from the esti- 
mated wealth of our nation the products of industry which do 
not now exist and that which now exists but is not a product of 
labor, and the amount remaining would be small indeed in pro- 
portion to the population and would have no money value. 
Wealth as now estimated consists in the private ownership of 
work-people who are now living and others who shall live in 
coming generajions. They are not held to their owners directly 
by legal documents, but by poverty and want, which the legal 
documents and the present economic system perpetuates. 

In the market where the seller charges the highest possible 
price for goods, he is unwittingly trying to increase the number 
of people who cannot buy goods. The buyer who pays the least 
possible price is helping to reduce profits and wages for those 
who produce and distribute the goods. He is doing what he 
can to reduce their ability to buy goods, and therefore to reduce 
the amount that shall thereafter be produced and distributed. 
Both buyer and seller are unconsciously struggling to increase 
the poverty of the country, while want drives laborers to their 
work of producing goods. Want and grasping between them 



5 Ec. Pr. of Confucius, p. 546. 

5 Everybody's Magazine, Aug. 1910. 



60 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

manage to keep the average amount of poverty and production 
at the stage which enables the working class to exist and a few 
of them to obtain wealth. Monopolies, which seek to get such 
"control over the supply of goods in a given market that a net 
gain will result to the seller if a portion is withheld", are doing 
in a larger way, what all are doing in a smaller when they with- 
hold either labor or goods because the price is not satisfactory. 
When all buyers and sellers of labor and products are trying to 
diminish the production of goods, how can the total production 
be large in proportion to the population! When individuals are 
trying to get more money, they are trying to diminish the amount 
in the possession of other people. They do not desire to increase 
the amount of money in the world and thereby diminish its pur- 
chasing power. Since prices of desired goods in the market fall 
in proportion as the quantity increases, all who are seeking 
higher prices for labor or products are unconsciously building 
their own scaffold by trying to diminish the number of people 
who can buy, and the amount of goods that can thereafter be 
produced. The wonder is, not that past civilizations crumbled 
and fell, but that they stood as long as they did. 

When two men are struggling to get much from each other, 
by giving little, we can readily see that both of them cannot get 
much. But when the men are a multitude our narrow vision is 
confused and we imagine that the total product of the business is 
enormous. The hungry eyes of the many who have little or 
nothing, see the "swollen fortunes" in the hands of the few, and 
each, thinking of himself only, does not take the trouble to use 
a little arithmetic to divide the dividends obtained by the wealthy 
few, by the number of the population. It should be self-evident 
to any one that when money, or a scarce medium of exchange, 
intervenes between wants and supplies, supplies must be scarce 
for people in general, although neither money nor supplies may 
be scarce for some individuals. 

The history of superstition contains sufficient proofs that 
in every age and country the majority of men have thought and 



PRESENT PRODUCTION 61 

acted like fools in relation to some matters concerning which 
they would not use their reasoning faculties. We have only re- 
cently ceased to burn witches, and to believe that slavery is a 
holy institution. And there are many of us today who shy at the 
number 13. The present system of economics is a subject on 
which multitudes do not dare to reason. They depend upon the 
few for whom that system of business seems constructed, and 
from whom, therefore, they must obtain consent before they can 
get employment, food, clothing and shelter. These satisfied few 
who control the *' System", pay the larger part of the salaries of 
editors, clergymen, and teachers of political economy in our 
universities. They endeavor to manage political parties, make 
their platforms, determine the fortunes of statesmen, and can 
give or withhold employment for multitudes of wage earners. 
These few, seem allwise to the unreasoning many. Superstition 
takes the place of reason in relation to subjects concerning which 
men do not dare to reason. 

Clergymen are the most conscientious class of men. Yet, 
with great unanimity, those of them whose salaries were paid by 
the slave owners, came to the conclusion that slavery was a divine 
institution after the invention of the cotton gin made the rearing 
of slaves very profitable to their owners. Previously the clergy 
of. New England concluded that slavery was wicked because on 
small New England farms, where winters were longer and more 
severe, requiring more fuel, shelter and clothing, the market price 
of slaves was less than the cost of rearing them to maturity. 
Money spent in rearing slaves did not increase the salaries of 
clergymen, but rather tended indirectly to diminish them. These 
"good men of God" in New England, if slavery had been finan- 
cially profitable, would have died in the defense of slavery, as 
many of their brethren in the South did later, if martyrdom for 
conscience's sake had been required of them suddenly. Few good 
men can endure a steady and long-continued pressure of self- 
interest, and of the interests of their families, against their 
opinion of what is right. They will change their opinion- in 



62 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

defiance of reason, and seek some theory that will help them to 
imagine that their former opinion was false. Therefore we should 
expect men to be more blindly and more skillfully superstitious 
in relation to the existing economic system than any other 
subject. 

It is simple superstition to think of "surplus values," 
"abstract values," "values," etc., existing apart and independent 
of particular goods. One cannot eat "abstract values", or any 
kind of "values" of bread and meat. One does not add anything 
to tools, money and sources of raw materials by calling them 
"productive capital". One never has seen such things producing 
even a pocket knife. A melon is nothing but a melon when its 
price, or money "value," is increased and few people are able 
to obtain it. Under the present system the fact that the different 
kinds of goods, are desired by many people who cannot obtain 
them, gives them a "money value" which is included in the esti- 
mated wealth of our country. To attempt to fill one's "belly on 
the east wind" is just as sane a diet, as to account the absence 
of goods, as wealth. Yet a very large part of the wealth of our 
nation, as estimated in dollars in Census Reports, consists in the 
fact, as heretofore mentioned, that a majority of our people can- 
not get enough common necessaries. If they were not scarce 
they would not have a price. If this kind of wealth which con- 
sists in scarcity were increased a hundredfold and equally dis- 
tributed among the working class by income tax, inheritance 
tax, social insurance, or any other method, it would not improve 
their condition. 

The "market value" of tenement houses and homes for rent 
depends upon the fact that multitudes are homeless. But what 
is the market value of being homeless, to the homeless! What 
is the market value of "private ownership" of the means of life, 
to those who cannot own them — to the multitudes now living, 
and who shall be born, under a system of business which shall 
compel them to sell themselves at their competitive value to the 
owners of the means of life, for the mere privilege of existence ! 



PRESENT PRODUCTION 63 

When the "market value" of the private ownership of the means 
of life is plus for the few and pvinus for the many the total value 
of this kind of property, according to algebra, is less than noth- 
ing. Why should the many be counted out when we estimate 
the total wealth of our country! And why should many work- 
people continue to regard as wealth, the figures and dollar marks 
that measure the money value of their poverty! The figures 
and dollar marks which they superstitiously regard as wealth 
and which they falsely imagine would make them comfortable, 
if more equally distributed, represent the money value of the 
poverty of that portion of the population who are working or 
seeking work without being able to find it. Plenty and "money 
values" are opposed one to the other. They cannot both exist 
in any system of business at the same time. 

The superstition that money is "stored wealth", is advocated 
by some comfortable teachers of political economy in our univer- 
sities whose chairs are well endowed by interest-bearing bonds 
which are mortgages on the means of life — and indirectly are 
mortgages on the work-people who must have access to the 
property owned by the university in order that they may continue 
to live. This may be "stored wealth" for the man occupying 
the chair of political economy, but the poor fellows who are 
working underground, and above ground — in school room, fac- 
tory and market place — trying to support families and pay rent 
on an insufficient wage, ought to have sense enough to know that 
those interest-bearing bonds that the university professor is 
writing about are not "stored wealth" for them. 

The superstition that money makes more money, or grows 
by drawing interest, or by being invested in a profitable business, 
is as foolish as the belief in charms and magic which we have 
recently outgrown. Did anyone ever see a dollar growing or 
making as much a;s one cent! How much richer would people 
be if everybody had a million times more money! How rich 
zvould people he if they had nothing hut money! If a man were 
the owner of an automatic thief which could steal for him, and 



64 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

if its thefts were authorized by law and defended by the army 
and navy, — and excused by obscure and therefore presumably 
profound theories of religion, ethics, nature and human nature, — 
the one owning such an automaton, or ^'stored wealth", could get 
more wealth by means of it, and would be honored above other 
men. 

If a father had a great orchard laden with apples and should 
compel his children to go out first and find four-leaf clover before 
they could have apples, apples would doubtless be scarce for 
these children. This use of the ^'automaton" and four-leaf clover, 
illustrates the office of money. It is an automatic thief. We are 
robbed when we receive it in exchange for labor or products, 
and we are robbers by compulsion when we pass it on. As the 
lawful medium of exchange it causes the things exchanged to 
be scarce in proportion to the population. In the case of the 
four-leaf clover, the children, while hunting for and finding the 
"scarce medium of exchange" which they must have in order to 
get apples, might fall to fighting among themselves each grasp- 
ing from the others. Some would have more of the medium 
than others and some would have none. Those who had most, 
could save the greater amount and buy apples many days or pay 
others to do their chores while they rested in the shade. The 
four-leaf clover in their possession would be "stored wealth", 
or "stored apples", in the sense of the term as used by some 
economists. Thus the money-king can compel men, women and 
children to be shelterless, hungry and naked, or to steal, if they 
will not work for him for such a sum as will barely enable them 
to exist and work. Present production must be small, in propor- 
tion to the population, and in proportion to the variety and in- 
tensity of their wants, because money, an invention and adjust- 
ment to the present destructive system, is scarce, except for a few. 

The means of producing a coat are not a coat. The means 
of producing wealth are not wealth. If we subtract from the 
estimated wealth of our country the estimated money value of 
the means of producing wealth, such as lands, mines, factories 



PRESENT PRODUCTION 65 

and the instruments of production, which are not homes, food, 
clothing, or luxuries for use or leisure, we would at once dis- 
cover that the existing amount of real wealth in our country is 
too small to perceptibly improve the condition of the average 
working man, if he had an equal share of it. 

When we think of the average man, or the common multi- 
tude, we see that present wealth does not include future products. 
But, as we have shown, the larger part of the estimated wealth 
of our nation does include future products, including the products 
of labor by laborers who are not yet born; it is therefore fic- 
titious. We cannot now live in a house or eat potatoes which 
do not now exist, but which may come into existence five, ten 
or forty years from now. The commercial value of a house or 
lot would be destroyed, if, for some reason, no one could get the 
products of another's labor after the present month, by means 
of them. Most of the estimated wealth of our country consists 
in the privilege of holding and conveying to others the power 
to get, without labor, a part of the products of future labor by 
other people, including those who are now infants and who shall 
be born hereafter. Most of the estimated wealth of our country 
is therefore "dream-stufi" and does not now exist except in 
fancy. 

The working class, high and low, do not seem to have the 
courage to use their reasoning powers concerning the economic 
superstitions of which they are the victims. If they would use 
it, they have sense enough to know that they can never be made 
comfortable by having a greater share of 'Visionary wealth", 
and that they cannot satisfy present hunger by eating bread that 
shall be baked by future generations. This is the kind of wealth 
which certain office seekers offer the public for votes when they 
promise that, if elected, they will help evolution to evolve still 
further the present economic system of grasping, by taking the 
government into partnership. But we can now see that the 
present system, whose genius is to perpetuate scarcity, would 



66 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

not be further evolved but totally destroyed by the abolition of 
poverty. 

There is a certain rich man who is said to be v^orth one 
thousand million dollars. He wears only one hat and one suit 
of clothes at a time. He eats only three meals a day, occupies 
three mansions and consumes daily some luxuries. H that which 
he actually uses as he goes through life were equally divided 
among the whole population, it would hardly increase each share 
by one good hat or one full meal. The thousand million dollars 
being the measure of the absence of or scarcity of ''real wealth", 
if equally divided, would be of no value. Why waste good time 
and thought in his direction ! The remedy is not there. 

The cause of poverty is not "individuals", no matter how 
rich, or a certain ''class", but, is caused by the universal consent 
to the struggle to "get much by giving little." Even enough 
of common necessaries for all who assist in producing and dis- 
tributing them, under the present system, is "overproduction" 
which would destroy prices, profits and wages, and result in 
panic, bankruptcy and unemployment. We blindly consent to a 
system that demands, and depends upon, the perpetuation of all 
the degrees and varieties of poverty from the bottom of society 
upward. The minimum income from which the others grade 
upward depends upon what the people at the bottom, in any given 
country, will endure without becoming dangerous. The silence 
of our statesmen and moulders of public opinion relative to this 
real cause of poverty is evidence of the power of superstition 
and the hypnotic spell of ages of error. 

The evil doctrine of "class hatred" and bitterness, poured 
into the mind of the illiterate workman by sincere but misguided 
teachers so that he sullenly views his employer as his chiefest 
enemy instead of a "fellow-victim", may require years of patient 
labor to counteract. And it is barely possible that our age has 
already hesitated in this important task too long. 



CHAPTER V 



PROFITS 



Profits obtained by the capitalist class are not the cause 
of th€ poverty of the masses. 

The Documentary History of the American Industrial 
Society^ contains suffifoient proofs that "the curve of prices 
in their recurring cycles is paralleled by the curves of politi- 
cal and labor movements. Prices, profits, and wages rise to- 
gether, not symetrically, of course, but substantially. But the 
higher prices consume the higher wages and still higher pay 
is demanded. Success breeds demand for shorter hours, and 
soon the employer finds that his profits have vanished, despite 
the volume of his trade and the highness of his prices. When 
he cannot sell Ms goods and cannot reduce his expenses he 
organizes against the labor movement, and the courts are ap- 
pealed to. Depression and unemployment come next in the 
cycle, and political agitation is the last phase. 

In 1910 the total capital of industrial combinations in tbe 
United States was $8,524,159,452.00.2 Ten per cent, dividends 
on that amount of capital, if divided equally between the whole 
population would have added to the income of each inhabitant 
only two cents per day. We evidently expect too much of our 
parties and Congress. Our statesmen may be wonderful men 
but they are not miracle workers. If we had the entire two 
cents it would hardly pay us for our terrible amount of ex- 
citement at election times. It certainly would not make us 



iThe Documentary History of the American Industrial Society, the 

Arthur H. Clark Company. 
2 The Thirteenth Census. 

67 



68 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

fabulously rich. Much if not all the time of Congress is oc- 
cupied in regulating the industrial combinations so as to per- 
mit them to continue in business and give us a small margin of 
their profit. If Congress would give us the entire profit of all 
manufactures inside industrial combinations and outside of 
them, our share would be five cents a day. Of course where 
Congress adds to the profits of these industrial combinations, 
as our national policy has graciously done in the past, Congress 
has been an expensive luxury and a financial loss to the people 
in relation to the regulation of industrial combinations. The fu-- 
tility of Congress to secure any perceptible amount of relief 
from poverty for the common people is due to the fact that 
there is no relief, even should we be given all the profits of in- 
dustrial combinations. The total capital in all manufactures in 
the United States in 1910, including custom work and repair- 
ing and all those establishments inside industrial combina- 
tions and outside of them, was $18,428,270,000.00.3 Ten per cent, 
of this total capital (which is far in excess of their average 
net profit) divided by the population and by the days of the 
year, is near Uve cents. It is very important to office seekers and 
their immediate relatives as to which of the political parties 
is in power; but the thoughtful person does not expect Con- 
gress to interfere with the great laws of the industrial world 
which perpetuates scarcity for prices. Should Congress ac- 
tually do anything that would provide more comforts and 
necessities for the common people, it would precipitate a panic 
on account of "overproduction.'' 

The average profit is less than ten per cent. While capi- 
talsts are competing for profits, underselling each other, it is 
impossible that the average profit on capital invested should 
be more than the rate of interest for money loaned on the 
safest securities. In an investigation by the Bureau of Labor 
Statistics of Connecticut into details connected with the busi- 
ness establishments of that State it was found that these es- 



The Abstract of the Thirteenth Census- 



PROFITS 69 

tablishments, having a capital of $48,665,000.00, employing 
29,256 hands and representing twenty-two distinct lines of 
industries showed an aggregate profit above all expenditures 
of six and fifteen one-himdredths per cent^ In 1910 an investi- 
gation by Congress, by the aid of proofs sworn to by public 
accountants, showed that the net profits obtained by forty 
representative textile manufacturing corporations of New- 
England, for the previous twenty years, was six and sixty 
seven-hundredths per cent. It was estimated that they were 
then operating at about eighty to ninety per cent, of capacity 
as against fifty per cent, at the beginning of the preceding 
year and only about twenty-five per qent. during the de- 
pression.^ 

A recent number of a popular magazine contained a sen- 
sational article, showing the vast profits made by one of the 
greatest railroad combinations in our country. In addition, 
to dividends, the managers had taken from the enterprise 
*Vatermelon" amounting to four hundred and seven million 
dollars in twenty-seven years. These figures are appalling to 
some minds. This amount of money would require a contri- 
bution of about one eighteenth of a cent a day from each in- 
habitant during that period. It is probable that all the "water- 
melon" obtained by all the capitalistic combinations in our 
country would not make two cents difference in the daily in- 
come of the average inhabitant. 

Ninety per cent, of all who undertake business for 
themselves fail of success.^ Success requires extraordinary 
skill because profits are small. Sugar is refined at a 
profit of one-eighth of a cent per pound and sometimes as low 
as one-sixteenth.^ On account of small profits, one-half of 
the sugar refineries in the sea-board cities of the United States 
failed or went out of business within the fourteen years pre- 



4 The Distribution of Products, Atkinson, p. 422. 

5 Wm. Whiteman, Everbody's Magazine, May 1910. 

6 Recent Economic Changes, Wells, p. 75. 
^ Ibid. 



'J'O EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

ceding 1889.^ It was discovered by those capitalists, who sur- 
vived in this industry, that by combining into a trust they 
could limit the output of sugar and obtain a price which 
would enable them to make a profit on the capital invested. 
The formation of the Sugar trust was an economic necessity 
and was not caused by a philanthropic desire of capitalists to 
help each other. The struggle to destroy each other was be- 
coming too deadly to be longer endured. Rebates of five cents 
per hundredweight, or one-twentieth of a cent per pound, enabled 
the sugar trust to undersell the beet sugar manufacturer in 
every market.^ The individual consumer would have to eat 
twenty pounds of sugar before it could make a cent of dif- 
ference to him which of the two capitalist combinations is 
driven into bankruptcy. 

In 1908 figures gathered by the Interstate Commerce 
Commission showed that the ton-mile rate on railways was 
three-fourths of a cent.^° Boxed meats have been carried from 
Chicago to London, as a regular business, for a half-cent per 
pound.^^ The profits of railroads on each loaf of bread, in- 
cluding the hauling of wheat and flour, is nine one-thousandth 
of a cent.^2 ^ ton of wheat can be hauled at sea at less than 
a farthing a mile.^^ 

Some politicians and sensational magazines have found 
it profitable to themselves to discover some instances of large 
profits and exhibit them to the people as proofs of the general 
rule. They do not mention that city franchises are not given 
away, as a regular business, and that new products of nature, 
like petroleum, are not being discovered continually. Giving 
land to railroads is not one of our staple industries. Let the 
reader buy Standard Oil stock and see if his dividends on his 



8 Ibid, p. 98. 

9 The Cosmopolitan, Oct- 1909. 

10 New York Times, Feb. 5, 1910. 

11 Recent Economic Changes, Wells, p.38. 

12 The Distribution of Products, p. 298. 

13 Evolution of Modern Capitalism, Hobson, 173. 



PROFITS 71 

investment are much above low rates of interest. After the 
original promoters of an industry which yields large profits 
have capitalized its earning power, they become wealthy. Later 
investors do not get large profits. And in our haste we are apt 
to confuse the two kinds of business men. The original promo- 
ters who succeeded in obtaining large profits are only a few ex- 
ceptions to the general rule. 

Profits in agriculture are small. Mr. J. P. Roberts, for 
thirty years Dean of the College of Agriculture of Cornell Uni- 
versity, informs us that during the twenty-five years covered by 
his investigation the majority of farmers had been selling many 
of the staple crops at a real lossM The farmer did not get for 
himself the wages of a common laborer. Many grain and hay 
farmers were working at fifty cents a day and boarding them- 
selves. For the preceding twenty-five years wheat had sold, on 
an average, on farms at scarcely more than a cent a pound; 
though the farmer must receive two cents in order to make 
wages. The other cereals made little or no better showing, if 
the cost of labor to produce them was taken into account. 

Poverty could not be relieved for all work people simply 
by workmen in factories and elsewhere seizing the management 
and control of the means of production and distribution. The 
"cure" lies deeper than this dangerous program now advocated 
by the Independent Workmen of the World and certain Social- 
ists. As shown in the previous chapter, the most that they could 
possibly get under the most favorable conditions would be 95 
cents per day if equally distributed, for that is all that is pro- 
duced. And more than that amount cannot be produced and sold 
for a price without causing such a reduction in all prices as to 
starve the workers whose manufactured goods could not be sold. 
Blind Sampson did not improve his condition by lifting the pil- 
lars of a building and tumbling the edifice upon his own heat. He 
did, however, succeed, perhaps, in killing the woman who cut his 



14 The Outlook, May 8, 1909. 



72 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

hair. But the "Delilah" that clips the comforts from our lives 
today, work as we may, is neither woman nor man. It is not "the 
other fellow" but ourselves — and not alone ourselves but also 
the other fellow. The real enemy is the absurd notion of men 
who think that "if everybody struggles to give little, everybody 
can get much". 

Half the energy and money wasted in strikes, if crystallized 
and hurled at Congress in an effort to secure the plan described 
in succeeding pages, would have relieved the nation of poverty 
years ago. 



CHAPTER VI 

WAGES 

The increase of the "productivity" of labor has not increased 
wages; and wages will not be permanently increased by labor- 
saving inventions while the present economic system continues. 
Labor-saving devices must be scarce in proportion to the popula- 
tion in order that products may be scarce and have a price. 

Sewing women are not more comfortably fed, clothed and 
sheltered than they were before the sewing machine was in- 
vented. The speed of sewing machines has been greatly in- 
creased even during the past ten years. They can carry as many 
as ten needles, sewing parallel seams. The rate of the machine 
is more than two thousand stitches per minute. In 1905 there 
were factories in Chicago where the rate of pay for one 'hun- 
dred pieces was one cent. Some girls found it difficult to earn 
one dollar a week. In London, women are still working nine- 
teen hours for one shilling and shirts are still being made for 
seven and a half pence per dozen.^ 

The cotton gin is equal to three thousand pairs of hands 
in separating seed from cotton ; factory spindles can make twenty 
thousand revolutions per minute and one person can attend to 
more than a hundred of them; the power loom throws the 
shuttle at the rate of from one hundred and eighty to two hun- 
dred and fifty times per minute and one weaver can attend to 
twenty of them. This marvelous increase in the productivity of 
labor does not increase the real wages of work people employed 
in this industry. 



1 Woman and Her Occupations, W. J= Thomas in the American 
Magazine, Sept. 1909. 



78 



74 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

In cotton mill towns of Alabama and North and South 
Carolina, poor industrious whites are in poverty equal to that 
of slaves before the Civil War. "The whole family toil at the 
loom often ten or twelve hours a day. Even children six years 
old are at work. The wages is a mere pittance even for grown 
persons. Nearly all of them live in settlements around the mills 
in cottages rented from the mill company and they buy their 
supplies from the company stores. The mill owners get them 
^coming and going'. Often a family of ten will live in four 
rooms. The children grow up stunted in body and mind."^ 

An ocean steamship is a little world and an example of the 
larger world of which it is a part. Compare the daily fare of 
the first-class passengers with that endured by the people herded 
in the steerage who are coming to America to do the hardest 
work. Compare the standard of living enjoyed by the owners 
of the vessel with those of the crew. Stokers down in the hot 
inferno on all European transatlantic liners receive twenty-two 
dollars and a half per month.^ The stoker's family, if he is mar- 
ried, live in a seaport city where rent and prices are high. His 
total income would not pay rent for comfortable shelter for his 
wife and children. 

The bunk rooms for stokers are like "damp, hot stables". 
Benches and tables are of the rudest possible construction. They 
are furnished with the cheapest food that may be sufficient to 
sustain their physical strength. Sailors are paid twenty dollars 
a month. "Their bunks contain discolored mattresses and 
blankets ready for the rag shop or the disinfectant chamber." 
At Liverpool twenty-two thousand dock laborers daily report at 
the gate seeking work, and, on the average, seven thousand of 
these fail to -find employment. Under expert supervision these 
idle men could make mechanical stokers and other devices which 
could do about all the hard work of low wage earners on the 
dock and on shipboard. Present applied science, if the existing 



2 The Washington Post. 

3 Samuel Gompers, in the New York World. 



WAGES 75 

economic system would permit, is now able to provide for the 
crew of an ocean steamer short hours of labor, elegant state 
rooms and the luxuries of first-class passengers. 

In the iron and steel industries, power machinery, in some 
operations, makes the labor of one man equal to that of more 
than a thousand men of a hundred years ago in the same indus- 
try. But under the system of prices for products, real wages do 
not increase for these laborers. The following facts are given 
in the first published report of the Civil Service Commission of 
the Churches of Christ of America in 1910.* In the Steel Works 
of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, just before the strike, four thou- 
sand, seven hundred and twenty-five men, or fifteen per cent, of 
all employees, worked twelve hours a day; two hundred and 
twenty workmen had a twelve-hour day, excepting on Saturdays 
when their hours were either ten or eleven. The total number 
working on seven days of the week, both regular and overtime, 
during January, was four thousand, nine hundred and forty-one, 
or forty-three per cent. Sixty-one per cent, of the nine thousand, 
one hundred and eighty-four men employed earned less than 18c 
an hour, or two dollars and sixteen cents for a twelve-hour day ; 
thirty-one and nine-tenths per cent, earned less than 14c an hour, 
or less than one dollar and sixty-eight cents for a twelve-hour 
day. The Committee declares that this is a wage scale that leaves 
no option for the common laborers but the boarding-house 
method of living with many men in a room. When a man has a 
family with him he takes in lodgers, or in some cases even the 
wife must go out to work for wages. 

An investigator, appointed by the State Department at 
Washington to travel through Europe for the purpose of investi- 
gating the adaptability of American products to foreign markets, 
gives the following description of the condition of the working 
class in some parts of Europe :^ "In Bohemia, for instance, the 
misery baffles description. The majority of peasants have con- 

4 Ida M. Tarbell, American Magazine, Oct. 1910. 

5 New York World, Aug. 28, 1910. 



76 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

sumption written plainly on their sunken, pathetic features. 
Throughout Austria and in many parts of Germany women are 
compelled to perform unusually heavy labor. Between Bruenn 
in Moravia and Dresden, the Saxon capital, it is a very common 
thing to see women along the roads engaged in breaking stones. 
Or, again, you might see them with pick and shovel employed as 
section hands. In Bohemia you can see women, some of them 
sixty years old, climbing ladders carrying up the stones and hods 
with bricks on their shoulders. You can see these very much 
emaciated wives and mothers work in the beet fields, earning 
twenty-five to thirty cents a day and all they will have for 
luncheon will be sandwiches made out of heavy black bread. As 
for the wages they receive they will scarcly enable them to keep 
soul and body together." 

Well known automatic devices could do the work of those 
Bohemian women who are climbing ladders and carrying stones 
and hods of brick upon their shoulders. Steam-power rock 
crushers are well known in the Saxon capital and could do the 
work of the poor German women working through long hours 
breaking stones, with hammers, to make the roads smooth for 
carriages which they can never own. Machines could also do 
the work of those German women working with pick and shovel 
as section hands, and also the work of those emaciated and half- 
fed wives and mothers working through long hours in the beet 
fields. But the present economic system will not permit them to 
be used to diminish the normal amount and varieties of poverty 
which must be endured either by the present victims or by their 
substitutes as they tumble down from the upper class. Struggle 
as they may, ninety per cent, make the tumble who attempt busi- 
ness for themselves. 

As typical of low wage earners in American cities we select 
the following description of a tenement house in Cincinnati, 
Ohio:^ "The writer visited the tentments in question and found 



6 The Appeal to Reason, July 25, 1910. 



WAGES ' 77 

them to be a veritable inferno. Men, women, boys and girls, 
American and foreign, most of them half naked, as the night 
was warm, were piled on rickety beds or were sprawled on floors 
and porches, A sickening stench arose from the mass of swel- 
tering, brutalized humanity. The collicky squalls of children 
resounded through the dark passageways where they mingled 
with the curses of men who could not sleep. In the alley in the 
rear of one of the tenement houses a dozen men were stretched 
out. With one who was still awake a short conversation was 
held. 1 have a wife and six children in that room up there,' he 
said, *I pay eight dollars a month for the room and it is parlor, 
bed room, dining room and kitchen, all in one. My eldest daugh- 
ter is sixteen and she works in a cigar factory. My thirteen- 
year-old boy sells papers. I make a dollar and twenty-five cents 
a day breaking rock when there is work to do. Some of us are 
nearly always sick and my wife is nearly an invalid. What is to 
become of my wife and children is beyond me.' " 

In Japan several thousand children together board and 
lodge in factories where they are employed. The children have to 
work nights, some times from fifteen to eighteen hours contin- 
uously.'^ Th^y are working in the interests of home and foreign 
capital invested in those factories. "American interests in the 
Orient" are of this nature. In this relation "America" means a 
few capitalists who desire to invest money in the Orient to ob- 
tain dividends, and our navy exists to promote and defend such 
"American interests". When the capitalists of China and Japan, 
assisted by American and European capital, shall transfer the 
commercial battle ground from the East to the West, our coun- 
try will be compelled to either change Its system of business, or 
reduce the labor cost of product to what it Is in the Orient. 

Butchering and meat packing must be conducted on a large 
scale to secure the greatest possible economy of production, and 
the labor cost per pound must be as small as possible. Speeding 



7 Poverty, Robert Hunter, pp. 356-358. 



78 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

wage earners is one way to reduce the labor cost by butchering 
and packing more pounds in the given time. Work-people object 
to this because it overtasks their strength, throws them upon the 
human scrap-heap while they are yet in mid-life, and hastens 
the coming of the period of business depression when their em- 
ployers will throw many of them out of work on account of over- 
production. Employing as much as possible women instead of 
men and children instead of women, is necessary in this fierce 
competition at home and abroad. A great butchering and meat- 
packing establishment can make profits out of the by-products, 
or refuse, of the slaughter house. The bounties of nature and 
present applied science could furnish substitutes for these repul- 
sive by-products at little more cost, and the work would not be 
uncongenial to people of refined tastes. But men, women and 
children of the working class, even in the stench and slime, must 
have a chance to work. By working ten hours a day they can 
clean enough intestines so that the difference between the labor 
cost of intestines and other artificial casings for sausage, may pay 
the small wage, and leave a profit to the owner of the packing 
house. These victims are our brothers and sisters and may 
eventually be our very daughters and sons, yet we demand still 
cheaper sausage when we go to buy and higher price for the 
goods we produce when we go to sell, regardless of such victims. 
Small wages are smaller when the wage earner is only oc- 
casionally employed. In 1890 the average number of wage 
earners in our country who were unemployed for the whole year 
was more than a million.^ The Census Report of 1900 showed 
that more than six million were unemployed for some part of 
the year, and more than two million males were unemployed 
from four to six months of the year. In the anthracite coal 
region, mines were idle, on the average, one-third of the time. 
An investigation into the clothing trade in New York City in 
1903, showed that during the first seven months of that year from 
twenty to thirty per cent, of wage earners in that industry were 

8 Ibid, p. 38. 



WAGES 79 

in enforced idleness. In 1908 the records of twenty-seven labor 
unions, selected from highly skilled trades, showed that thirty- 
two per cent, of the total membership were unemployed.^ 

A careful investigation into the causes of poverty has shown 
that only about twelve per cent, arises from laziness.^^ 'With 
proper nourishment, hope, and employment adapted to their 
natural talents, even this twelve per cent, would not be lazy. 

Our working men are being gradually thrown out of work 
or compelled to accept wages of women and children. One mil- 
lion seven hundred thousand children were toiling in our fields, 
mines and factories in 1904.^1 

There are three hundred and sixty thousand dark rooms in 
the rented homes in New York City.^^ Work people do not live 
in crowded rooms in tenement houses because they yearn to do 
so. The density of the population increases with the decrease of 
wages, and overcrowding is greatest where wages are lowest.^^ 
To pay rent on so small portions of capitalized space, cost a 
fearful struggle. In the year 1903 in the borough of Manhattan 
three hundred thousand persons were evicted from their places 
of shelter.!* The per cent, of those who went without sufficient 
food, and whose little children were killed by overwork, and 
whose young daughters were driven to sell their virtue to avoid 
being thrown out upon the streets, can never be known. 

The poor will not consent to become objects of charity until 
self-respect is destroyed. Many will resort first to vice and crime 
to obtain money. Nevertheless a recent investigation showed 
that about one- third of the city of New York had depended upon 
charity some time during the preceding eight years.^^ Imprison- 
ment becomes attractive to many because in the penitentiaries 



9 John Mitchell, in the Outlook, Sept. ii, 1909. 

10 The Metropolitan Magazine, Oct. 1909. 

11 Poverty, Robert Hunter, p. 223. 

12 Ibid, p. 342. 

13 Ibid, p. 345. 
i*Ibid, p. 24. 
16 Ibid, p. 22. 



80 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

the work is not harder than work outside and the standard of 
Uving is higher. Neither theft nor the repetition of the crime 
after imprisonment is sufficient proof of an appetite for theft. 
It may be an appetite for clothes, food and shelter and security 
against the mental distress caused by uncertainty of employment. 

For one death, two are severely sick and three need medical 
help. For every sickness that comes once to the rich, it comes 
twice to the poor and three times to the still more densely 
crowded quarters of the very poor.^^ 

Froude, the English historian, reaches the following conclu- 
sion concerning the condition of laborers during English history : 
"The level of comfort in the families of the laboring millions 
has, in this country, been rather declining than rising. The im- 
portant results have been, so far, rather political and social."^'^ 
In England, as a general rule, before the introduction of steam 
power machinery and the factory system, every house was a 
home and a place of domestic manufacture. Every family kept 
a horse and cow or two. In the towns where weaving and metal 
trades were carried on large numbers of the workers had allot- 
ments of land in the country to which they gave their spare time 
and many kept cattle on the common lands. ^^ 

"Six Centuries of Work and Wages," by Thorold Rogers, 
Professor of Political Economy in the University of Oxford, 
England, traces the history of wages and prices in. England dur- 
ing the preceding six hundred years. He proves that real wages, 
or wages in proportion to the cost of living, had not increased. 
"In the thirteenth century ordinary farm land was rarely rented 
for more than a sixpence an acre. In the Middle Ages the poor 
ate wheaten bread, drank barley beer, and had plenty of cheap, 
though perhaps coarse, meat. Mutton and beef at a farthing a 
pound, take what multiple you will, and twelve is a liberal one, 
were within the reach of far more people than they are now. 



16 Poverty, Robert Hunter, p. 145. 

17 Short Stduies, Froude, Second Series, pp. 245-279* 

18 Effects of Hachinery on V/ages, J. S. Nicholson. 



WAGES 81 

The grinding, hopeless poverty under which - existence may be 
just continued, did not, I am convinced, belong to medieval 
life."!^ From A. D. 1429 to 1450 divers workmen were engaged 
in building in Oxford. Their wages, represented in American 
money at its purchasing power in 1884, were as follows: head 
mason, eleven dollars and fifty-two cents a week ; other laborers, 
nine dollars and sixty cents and eight dollars and sixteen cents 
a week. The building trade in London more than four centuries 
later, after a hard struggle to obtain an advance in wages, ob- 
tained ten dollars and eighty cents a week. By comparing prices 
of fuel, food and clothing and rent with the wages of laborers 
Mr. Rogers proves that wages as improved by Labor Unions, 
were, even yet, less in 1860 than they were four hundred and 
sixty years before. 

Nominal wages are higher in the United States than they 
were ten or twenty years ago and much higher than they were 
a century or two earlier, but the purchasing power of a day's 
work has not increased. The bulletins of the Labor Bureau show 
that the /price of all commodities average thirty-five and four- 
tenths per cent, "higher in 1906 than in 1896. An investigation 
into about four thousand establishments engaged in manufacture 
and mechanical industries where attempts to advance wages 
would be most likely to be successful, has shown that the wages 
in 1906 were only nineteen and one-tenth per cent, higher than 
in 1896.2^ The apparent increase in wages was a reduction of 
about sixteen per cent, in real wages during the ten-year period, 
or, wages in proportion to the cost of living. 

In our new country, wild lands have been changing into 
farms ; the various industries have been organizing and growing ; 
villages, towns and cities have been built with marvelous rapid- 
ity. This has caused the greater demand for labor, resulting in 
higher wages as compared with those of older countries. The 



19 Six Centuries of Work and Wages, Thorold Rogers, Professor of 

Political Economy, University of Oxford, England, p. 415. 

20 Ida M. Tarbcll in American Magazine, Oct. 1910. 



82 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

cause for our superiority is temporary, and the effect must be 
temporary also. Old countries were once new and we are doing 
business in the same old way. Because steam and electricity are 
our servants, time and space, in relation to government, are less 
than they were as experienced by former generations. A young 
nation can become old now in a hundred years. 

Like the United States, Rome began with free lands for 
the people- Her system of business, based on the same grasping 
principle as ours, evolved until there were at Rome scarcely two 
thousand people owning property considered taxable: such was 
the enormous monopoly of public lands and other property by 
the few.2^ Now in the United States one per cent, of its families 
own more property than the remaining ninety-nine — that is, 
property as estimated in money values.^^ About seventy-five per 
cent, of our families are virtually without property. In 1903 
more than eighty-one per cent, of the working class families were 
living in rented homes, while a few, about eight per cent., were 
able to live in mortgaged homes.^s 

The relative number of hired farms has been steadily in- 
creasing while the relative number of farmers who own farms 
has been diminishing. This result is of course desirable to the 
fifty-four individuals and foreign syndicates who now own 
26,710,390 acres in our country ; — an area greater than seven of 
the most populous of eastern states.^* "One-fourth of the culti- 
vated land of the United States is owned by a handful of per- 
sons whose total number is less than that of a good-sized suburb 
of an eastern city."25 The half-dozen groups of men who control 
200,000 miles of our railways naturally desire an indefinitely 
greater amount of farm products in order to get profits. The 
cities and mining and manufacturing interests of our nation tend 
to demand that farmers shall increase the amount and decrease 



21 The Ancient Lowly, Ward, p. 192. 

Strabo Geographica XIV 668, Apulejus IX. 

22 Poverty, Robert Hunter, p. 44. 

28 Report of the Twelfth Census Vol. 2, 192. 

24 Privilege and Democracy in America, Howe, p. 38. 

26 Ibid, p. 43. 



WAGES 83 

the prices of farm products which they sell and, at the same time, 
pay a higher price for what they desire to buy. The history of 
China and other old-grown countries indicates that the farmers' 
last state in America is not hopeful.* 



* [The farmer has never been able to protect his selling price. Unlike 
the manufacturer or mine operator he cannot withhold production until 
"consumption overtakes production" by closing down his farm- He must 
continue to plant, regardless of the markets. Unable to organize, he is 
at the mercy of chance and organized sentiment of the consumers. He 
is a wage earner paying himself wages which in many cases is nothing 
above a bare and lonely existence; while no one is heard to advocate 
a "minimum wage" for him. On the contrary, we notice at this writing 
(1913) a suggestion made by one branch of our government that indi- 
cates that the day has now come when the American farmer shall be 
sacrificed on the altar of our grasping system. The organized graspers, 
it seems, are about to receive the aid of the government in order to 
grasp from the unorganized agricultural wage earner. 

"Federal Plan to Help Labor" is the headline appearing in a re- 
cently edited periodical. The article states the outline suggested by 
Assistant Secretary of Labor Mr. Louis Post. 

"The plan," says the article, "contemplates stopping the overcrowd- 
ing of the American labor market. It aims first to follow out the ex- 
press intention of the department, to safeguard the welfare of the wage 
earners of the United States, while incidentally it will offer a solution 
of the problem of immigration. The plan as outlined is: First, the 
department act, so that immigrants may be sent to Country Districts. 
Second, the cooperation of the Interior Department in providing lands 
for wage earners, for the men who actually overcrowd the labor market 
[ of the cities] ** and the general cooperation of the government in a 
farm credit system. ** On reaching this country the alien would ** be 
despatched to government land. ** The general government would pro- 
vide capital under proper limitations." 

'People may say that this looks after the alien and not the American," 
said Mr. Post, "but it will provide this system for either the alien or the 
American." And then, as though to apologize for overcrowding farm 
wage earners whom he had decided to omit from his catagory, he con- 
tinues: "At any rate it is designed to prevent these aliens from coming 
here, settling in the cities and overstocking the [city] labor market to the 
detriment of all [city wage earners] concerned. 

The pith of the suggestion is this : Let the city wage earners be pro- 
tected from the evils of competition. Let the scattered farm wage 
earners be sacrificed and let the government help in the slaughter. 

The baneful effect of our unworkable system of prices is coming 
home to us and we must choose the class of citizens which shall first be 
pushed down into the lowest degrees of poverty. We admit that the 
choice is a nasty one, but is inevitable so long as we indulge in the 
delusion that our total amount of wealth can be large when every indi- 
vidual unit of society is consciously or unconsciously trying to maise it 
small.— W.H.T.] 



84 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

Because of our rapid development, Great Britain is not far 
in advance of us in our progress toward extreme poverty for 
the working class. Lloyd-George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
estimate that:^^ "Of the four hundred and twenty thousand 
adults who died last year (1909) in the British Isles, five-sixths 
were in poverty. They left no property worth any one's while 
to pick up — a few articles of cheap clothing and furniture which 
the broker's man would not sell for rent. * * * It is such 
facts as these — the gigantic wealth at one end that a man cannot 
spend in a life time of luxury, and at the other end millions 
burning with semi-hunger and pains of anxiety and poverty, 
which are producing murmurs at the heart of England which 
shows that there is some disease in the system." 

But Mr. George failed to diagnose the disease or to men- 
tion the fact that it is aggravated by the invention of labor- 
saving machinery. When men attempt to get much by struggling 
to give little, those who gain control of labor-saving devices be- 
come unequal combatants. Extremes appear. Concentration of 
wealth follows. The end is but a matter of time. Thus has 
every nation approached its danger point as it approached the 
zenith of its civilization. 



26 New York World, Nov. 20, igio. 



CHAPTER VII 

RESTRICTED POWER IMAOBrHTERY 

The steam engine, when used, makes, on the average, the 
labor of one man equal to that of one hundred and twenty men.^ 
It is, as far as we know positively, a recent invention. When 
some old men now living were born, (in 1825) it was not used 
in manufacture in America and was only beginning to displace 
domestic manufacture in Europe.^ If steam power was now 
used to assist all labor in the United States, our American work- 
ing force would be equal to that of six worlds as populous as 
ours, working with the tools used eighty-five years ago. This 
vast additional working force would be working without wages, 
donating its products to us, providing not only common neces- 
saries but also such luxuries as men and machines can create. 
Steam and electric power would do most of the work of making 
machines. 

We will show in the following chapters that, by increasing 
the number of steam and electric power machines already in- 
vented, there is very little labor that could not be displaced and 
(under our plan) re-employed. The amount of products, under 
a system of business which would permit the unlimited use of 
power machinery, would be more than we could use even if the 
minimum standard of living should be that which is now enjoyed 
by millionaires. 

The present small production of consumption goods in pro- 
portion to the population, is proof that machines, in use for the 



1 Progress of Invention, Byrn, p. ii6. 

2 Ibid, pp. 6-36. 



85 



86 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

production of consumption goods, are few. We will see in the 
following chapter on The Impending Crisis, how the labor dis- 
placed by machinery in the production of consumption goods has 
been re-employed, and how most of the steam power has been 
employed. 

Steam power has been little used in agriculture. Only one 
acre in twenty thousand is plowed by machinery, and plowing 
consumes sixty per cent of the energy expended in tilling the 
soil.^ The machines which enable two men to plow, or plow and 
harrow, one hundred and twenty acres in a day,* and which 
enable five or six men to plow, harrow, seed and cover seventy- 
five acres in a day, and at harvest to cut, thresh and -put in bags 
the grain of seventy-five acres in a day, are very few in propor- 
tion to the number of farmers. We will show that without any 
new inventions, machines could be used in most operations in 
agriculture, including the production of garden vegetables. 
Machine plows alone would release sixty per cent, of the energy 
expended in tilling the soil and still continue the present amount 
of products. Five or six million farmers re-employed in pro- 
ducing and using machines could cause what would now be re- 
garded as a terrific ''overproduction" of machinery and products. 
In comparison with the value of all farm property, the per cent, 
of value of all farm implements and machinery continued to be 
about the same from 1850 to 1900.^ As a rule, farmers are too 
poor to buy machinery. And, moreover, with slow tools, and 
with unscientific methods of cultivation, they are continually on 
the edge of causing an ''over-production". They are trying in 
a feeble way to imitate the trusts and other industrial combina- 
tions by limiting the output. By causing farm products to be- 
come scarcer they can get a higher price, and, for a time, get 
more money for their labor in producing them. Famine, drouth, 
"calamity for the other fellow" are their best friends. 

3 The World's Work, Aug. 1910. 

Joseph Jacobs in the American Magazine, March, 1909. 

4 The Technical World, Dec 1910. 

5 The Abstract of the Twelfth Census, p. 217. 



RESTRICTED POWER MACHINERY 87 

By examining the Census Report of 1900, we discover that 
in three hundred and sixty lines of manufacture in the United 
States, less than one dollar and forty cents a day, contributed by 
each employee for one year, would be equal to the money value 
of all tools, implements and machines used in manufacture. It 
is evident that workmen are selling themselves, in competition 
with machinery, at a very low figure. The total capital in- 
vested in the manufacture of boots and shoes in the United 
States was less than the price of one cheap pair of shoes for 
each inhabitant. The total capital in the textile industries was 
less than the price of one cheap suit of clothes for each in- 
habitant. When people cost less than iron it is evident that they 
are selling themselves pretty cheap. It is evident that capitalism, 
alone, is not the cause of their bondage. Capitalism is doing 
business, as here evidenced, on a marvelously small amount of 
capital in proportion to the population. Of the more than five 
million wage earners employed in manufacture and hand trades, 
in 1900, only one out of every thirteen was employed by indus- 
trial combinations, serving employers who would be likely to use 
expensive machinery. And those industrial combinations using 
expensive machinery were mostly employed in producng instru- 
ments of trade and transportation, and not in the production of 
consumption goods. Thus we discover that the production of 
"use-goods" for people is restricted, notwithstanding the inven- 
tion of big machinery. 

Under the right system of business, for example, the ditch- 
digging machine, which makes one man's labor equal to that of 
forty men, could be used in a neighborhood where it is needed 
and then transported to some other place for service. Com- 
pared with what the thirty-nine men out of every forty could 
do when re-employed at other work, the labor of making the 
machine would be insignificant. This is an illustration of what 
could be done in ail operations in all industries where labor- 
saving methods are possible, if goods were produced for use and 
not a selling price. And the instances are rare indeed in which 



BB EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

they are not possible in the present state of applied science. 

Perishable goods which are produced only at certain sea- 
sons of the year could be everywhere produced by the aid of the 
best existing machines, which are now used in a few places. The 
innumerable little competitors, who are now producing such 
goods, are too poor to buy the machines and will be still poorer 
in the event the middlemen and "back-to-the-farm army" return 
to the soil.* If they were now supplied with these labor-saving 
machines, free of charge, they would cause a *'glut" of the mar- 
ket and so lower the price of such farm products that they would 
not have money enough to buy clothes and pay taxes. 

Under the right system of business the simplicity and ir- 
regular nature of work would not keep out machinery as is the 
case today when, for example, a cheap man loads a dray with 
things as heavy as his muscles can lift, and his poverty drives 
him to his slavish task ten hours a day. Such a man works at 
many small jobs during the year. No one task justifies the pur- 
chase of a "lifting crane'' so the man and not the machine does 
the work. In all such small enterprises and simple tasks man 
must be used today as any other beast of burden. But he is 
more than a beast and for that reason he will work through long 
hours, even beyond the limits of strength, rather than beg or 
steal to get bread or shelter for others than himself — a wife and 
dependent children. There is in him a moral glory which seems 
most divine and brings in bold relief the iniquity of that "Sys- 
tem" which, as yet, enslaves and impoverishes men., In small 
industries, one cannot afford to buy electric cranes, motor-driven 
endless belts, and the other well-known devices for doing such 
work. Under a system of business that would permit them to 
do so, machines could perform simple operations as well as those 
which are complex. These simple operations are the principle 
part of the world's work and its needless waste. 



* [Convict farming, as is now the case in many states, is another in- 
vasion which increases the poverty of the farmer to that degree. — 
W.H.T.]. 



RESTRICTED POWER MACHINERY 89 

Iron ore is heavy. So, also, are steel rails, locomotives and 
armor plate. The opportunity for a few capitalists to get profits 
by driving out domestic manufacture by the factory system, and 
driving out former modes of transportation by building rail- 
roads and steamships, came suddenly. The cheapness of men, 
whose strength was insufficient and whose movements were too 
slow, did not prevent the introduction of very costly and most 
powerful machinery for this work. 

Cotton is not heavy. Very cheap men, women and children 
can handle it. But when the invention of the cotton gin fur- 
nished an opportunity for a few capitalists to compel the majority 
of the civilized world to chamge their clothes from woolen and 
linen, human hands were too slow. . In the presence of this sud- 
den opportunity, even though more clothes in proportion to the 
population were not produced, work-people could not speed 
enough, except in producing" the cotton in the fields. Human 
hands could not move ordinary spinning wheels and shuttles 
fast enough. Therefore capitalists hired experts to invent and 
perfect machines for spinning and weaving which enabled ori;^ 
weaver to weave as much cloth as four hundred former weavers. 
While this great expenditure of labor power, which caused 
the majority of the civilized world to change their clothes, was 
occurring, the scarcity of clothes, in proportion to the popula- 
tion, was as carefully guarded as before — a fact well worth 
noting. No price could have been received if otherwise. Our 
grandparents wore clothes which were more durable and perhaps 
much more serviceable than those which are in the markets now. 
And low wage earners did not suffer more from insufficient 
clothing than they do at present. 

As a general rule, power machinery has only been intro- 
duced in production of consumption goods sufficiently to drive 
out domestic manufacture from the homes and immediate neigh- 
borhoods of people. It has not increased the per capita amount 
of consumption goods for the working class, though this class 
constitutes the large majority of the population. Any factory hand 



90 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

who sees himself thrown out of work by the factory slowing 
down, because it has more product on hand than can be sold, 
sees an example of the restricted use of power machinery. He 
knows that when the quantity of the kind of goods which he is 
helping to produce is greatly increased, the price falls and his 
wages are reduced by enforced idleness. He, at least, should 
be able to understand that if power machinery shall ever be mul- 
tiplied sufficiently to take away scarcity and prices out of its 
products, and convey goods to all who help to produce and dis- 
tribute them, a radically different economic system must be sub- 
stituted for the one now existing. He should now be able to 
see that it must be an economic system which excludes prices, 
profits and wages. This may seem as absurd as the first sugges- 
tion to the scientific world that "the earth was round," yet we 
have at last accepted the revolutionary idea concerning the shape 
of the earth ; and the acceptance of this economic truth may, for 
a season, be buffeted by superstition, prejudice and ignorance; 
but, like all truth, this, too, must triumph in the end. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THi: IMPENDING CRISIS 

The steam engine when used enables the labor of one man, 
on the average, to displace the labor of 119 former men.^ This 
was a sudden and vast increase of labor power presenting itself 
to a labor market already overcrowded. When this sudden and 
marvelous labor power entered the market in modern times, 
representing in effect millions of slaves, killing off the majority 
of the working class who were forced to compete against it, was 
contrary to public sentiment and decidedly inexpedient. Yet 
steam power came crowding into the labor field, and it has come 
to stay. How can the new amount of labor power, in addition 
to all former energy, be employed! What shall be done with 
the 119 out of the 120 men affected by the new labor force! 

Steam power machinery cannot be employed in increasing 
the production and distribution of consumption goods for the 
majority of the population. This has been sufficiently proven 
in preceding chapters. (See Chapter VII, Part I). 

Our modern increase of labor power has mostly occurred 
within the memory of men now living. 

Watts obtained his first patent on his invention for applying 
steam power in 1769. The first locomotive was built in 1814. 
The first railroad was built in 1825. The first railroad in the 
United States was built in 1826. Seventy-three years later there 
were 445,064 miles of railway in the world, of which 245,238 
miles of track were within the United States, or enough within 
the United States alone to make a single track to the moon and 



1 Principles of Economics, Fetter, p. 315. 

91 



92 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

more than two hundred thousand miles beyond it. The rail- 
roads of the United States had 1,318,700 cars ; more than enough 
to reach three times across the continent from the Atlantic to' 
the Pacific oceans.^ The first railway connection across the 
continent was finished in 1869. 

The first practical steamboat was built by Fulton in 1807; 
the first steamer crossed the Atlantic in 1819. Ocean steamers 
beg^an to be a factor in the carrying trade in 1838. By the year 
1860 thirty per cent of ships were steam pTopelled;^ while in 
1894 eighty per cent were steam ships. In 1911 the proportion 
was about the same, indicating that the new work of driving 
sailing vessels out of business was about finished. 

When the battle of New Orleans was fought in 1815 the 
news was twenty-two days in reaching the government at Wash- 
ington. In 1898 a message was sent from Washington to Lon- 
don and a reply received in thirteen and a half seconds. This 
meant a wonderful saving of labor in carrying messages and 
necessarily involved the discharge of multitudes of messengers 
who must find re-employment in some kind of work other than 
producing a greater amount of consumption goods. The first 
telegraph message was sent in 1844. The first Atlantic cable was 
laid in 1858. Forty years later there were nearly 3,000,000 miles 
of land telegraph; while in 1911 the aggregate length of sub- 
marine telegraphs was a quarter of million miles.* The Bell 
telephone was patented in 1876. The American Bell Telephone 
Company now has more than a million miles of wire in use.^ It 
is estimated that more than sixteen million miles of wire are 
now in use by the people of the United States in telephone and 
telegraph lines. 

A part of the labor displaced by steam power has been re- 
employed in producing these new instruments of communication 



2 Documentary History of the American Industrial Society. The 

Arthur H. Clark Company. 

3 Progress of Invention, Byrn, Scientific American Office, pp. 6-36. 

4 Ibid. 

5 Ibid. 



THE IMPENDING CRISIS 93 

and transportation on land and sea. Although the work was vast 
it was quickly accomplished by the displaced laborers, who were 
at these tasks re-employed. 

Steam power has also been largely employed in the work of 
displacing domestic manufacture by the factory system. This 
great work has also been accomplished in a very short time. All 
weaving in America was done hy hand previous to 1815. In 1813 
there were not more than twenty- four hundred power looms in 
the world. Forty years later the power looms in existence were 
able to do the work of two million hand looms. One workman 
spinning had become equal to seven hundred former ones. 

■When all industries are considered, the tool-using "house- 
hold industry," on farms and in homes where the greater part 
of the things used were produced in the families, was still the 
typical organization in the United States seventy-five or eighty 
years ago.^ In 1825, in Europe, the introduction of power ma- 
chinery in manufacture was causing the alignment of the slaves 
of machinery against the system of the division of labor and the 
destruction of home industries, but in America the factory sys- 
tem did not exist.'^ 

Building factories and their machinery, factory cities, with 
tenement houses for employees and homes for the employers and 
stores and office buildings and dwelling houses for traders and 
their agents, absorbed a great amount of the new labor power of 
Europe and America resulting from the application of steam 
power to machinery. Thus have the dinner-pails of the 119 
men out of every 120, affected in the change, been comfortably 
filled. While machines were multiplying rapidly and being em- 
ployed principally in building railroads and those railroad cities 
which are part of the system, steam ships, factories, etc., the dis- 
•placed labor could be increasingly re-employed in such work, and 
at the same time machinery could diminish the number of per- 



6 Popular Electricity, Jan. 191 1. 

7 Modern Industrial Progress, Cochrane, p. 47. 



94 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

sons needed in the production and distribution of consumption 
goods. 

The human labor previously employed in building many 
small cottages in the country was now largely employed in build- 
ing the one large tenement house, in the factory city, into which 
the same number of work-people were more closely crowded. The 
human labor expended in building a factory and its machinery 
was not \greater than the previous labor of making many simple 
tools and little factories, in country homes and villages, which 
were driven out of business by the one factory. The human 
labor expended in building the larger number of sailing vessels 
was now employed in building, with the aid of steam power, the 
smaller number of steam-ships which displaced the former and 
caused them to be thrown on the junk heap. The number of 
men, in proportion to the whole population, who were employed 
in building railroads, aided in much of their work by steam 
power, was not greater than the number previously employed 
with simple and slow tools, in making former instruments of 
transportation and distribution on land and on sea. (See Chap- 
ter XI, Part II). 

The work of displacing domestic manufacture in our 
country, which has filled the dinner pails so effectually, cannot 
continue, for little domestic manufacture now remains to be 
displaced. We have scarcely a local butcher or blacksmith but 
depends on others for his supplies. No one can suppose that 
railroads can continue to multiply at the furious rate of the past 
sixty years. They are now sufficient to haul the freight of our 
country and they are competing on smaller profits and are form- 
ing combinations to reduce expenses to avoid bankruptcy. In 
proportion to the cost of living, the railroads have reduced the 
wages of their employees until strikes are not infrequent, and 
at times threaten to become so widespread as to cause famine 
in our land which has evolved a dependence on the "wholesale 
centers" for food and clothing. 

The vast army who have been displaced by the "iron giant", 



THE IMPENDING CRISIs" 95 

finding their task about finished, are beginning to look about for 
employment with which to fill tlie stomach and procure the 
necessaries of existence. They are discovering that somehow 
they have disemployed themselves, for they cannot go back to 
the little workshop by the side of the mill-wheel, for it is not 
there. They cannot find employment in the fewer big factories, 
because these can now make more than can be sold and not run 
full time. There are no new railway systems being planned, but 
only here and there a connecting link, so that the army of town 
builders — carpenters, brickmen, artisans of all kinds — are be- 
ginning to experience a pause and are becoming idle much of the 
time. Men cannot get back to the farm to any extent, and if 
they could they would find that they would produce an over- 
production and could not market their crops. 

The steamship lines are also combining to cut expenses by 
empolying fewer men, in order to give dividends to their owners 
a little above rates of interest. Their wage earners are reduced 
to the lowest standard of living that civilized men will endure. 
(See Chapter VI, Part I). 

In conjunction with these growing economic changes and 
stress, a world-wide strike is being planned by workmen who 
have not the knowledge of their real enemy. 

Domestic manufacture is now about displaced by the factory 
system in Europe and America. No more factories, under the 
present system of economics, are needed for the present popula- 
tion of the entire world. The temporary advantage of Europe 
and Atnerica competing with uncivilized nations, the one work- 
ing with steam-power machinery and the other with hand tools, 
has lifted the living standard of Europe and America on account 
of the great balance of trade in their favor; but when China 
and Japan attend to their own manufacturing by the aid of steam 
power and modern methods, manned by cheaper human labor, 
what then shall support our higher standard ! 

Factories also are now combining to reduce expenses in 
order to pay dividends a little above low rates of interest. As 



96 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

a general rule they do not run at their full capacity and they 
frequently slow down or suspend operations until consumption 
overtakes production. 

Thus we see that the new labor power caused by the appli- 
cation of steam to machinery has acted like an invading 
army of Goths and Vandals in the labor world — usurping the 
function by which human beings formerly gained their daily 
bread, while the displaced laborers have been blinded to 
the fact by being able to find re-employment in an evanescent 
and temporary occupation, namely : the substitution of one mode 
of transportation and method of manufacture for another — caus- 
ing people to change their clothing from woolens and flax to 
cotton and shoddy without giving them more of the latter, caus- 
ing them to go to the cities to live instead of the purer atmo- 
sphere of the rural communities. 

But whatever value these changes may have brought, 
they have not provided a greater amount of food, clothing, fuel 
or shelter for the majority of mankind and a question of stu- 
pendous importance to us is found in the fact that this vast and 
wonderfully sudden task is about finished. How then, in the 
future, can this tremendous amount of capital and labor con- 
tinue to find employment! It cannot be turned to producing 
consumption goods without causing an overproduction, which 
in turn would cause suspension of business and general bank- 
ruptcy and unemployment, riot and bloodshed throughout the 
civilized world. And if this amount of labor and capital should 
become and continue to remain idle the same result would follow. 

Workingmen, who have been the hired butchers of their 
fellowmen from the time when money was first invented until 
now, have national and international organizations. Many of 
them ignorantly but sincerely believe that their employers, in- 
cluding the chief leaders in Church and State, are the causes of 
their increasing poverty and are lighting the "fuse" of class- 
hatred. Their poverty and unemployment are now more than 
they are willing to endure and a further contempt of these facts 



THE IMPENDING CRISIS 97 

by the comfortable citizens would be more dangerous than the 
bitterest tirades of the most radical agitators of our time. A 
great and comparatively sudden increase of their poverty would 
cause the lighted powder to reach the magazine. Can there be 
one so blind to his own safety as to fail to read the warning of 
the ''increasing high cost of the necessaries of life" ! Does there 
appear a man who can tell us just how much higher these com- 
mon things will go in price? No: but we are assured by the 
wise that they will go higher and not lower; and the high cost 
of living is not the most serious problem. It but indicates a 
danger far more serious than those who complain may believe. 

A crisis, paralleled in history by the closing scenes of every 
other fallen civilization, is impending ! 



PART SECOND 
THE OTHER SYSTEM 



CHAPTER I 

THE OTHZIB ECONOMICS 

Only one other economic system is imaginable. We would 
not ask our government to create an economic experiment to 
test one economic system in preference to many others. There 
is only one other and it has never been tested by experiment. 

The present economic system is a system of grasping. The 
only other one imaginable is a system of giving. This fact is 
shown in every period of business depression on account of 
"overproduction." Everyone knows that in such a crisis pro- 
duction and distribution could continue and increase indefinitely, 
if capital and labor would agree to keep on working without 
profits and wages and everywhere would produce goods and 
distribute them among those who assist in producing and dis- 
tributing them. Of course, there is no probability of this ever 
being done in the ordinary course of business ; therefore, we are 
about to suggest an extraordinary course. A direct reversal of 
the aim of business from prices to no-prices, from profits to 
no-profits, from wages to no-wages, or from grasping to giving 
is the only other ruling principle for a system of economics. 
The history of thousands of years proves that "grasping" pro- 
duces poverty for the majority of workmen. The opposite prin- 
ciple could, at least, do no worse. 

An economic system may be either crude or highly 
evolved. The present economic system of grasping began in a 
crude form in the cave and jungle when men thought that they 
could get much by giving little. From the beginning until now 
it has made use of both competition and co-operation. Inven- 

101 



102 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

tions appeared and the struggle began to be unbalanced. Ex- 
tremes began to develop. Concentration of wealth became in- 
evitable. Men organized into fraternities, or tribes, for the 
purpose of getting human flesh for food, or for getting posses- 
sion of property in the former possession of victims. The eco- 
nomic system became more highly evolved when it was dis- 
covered to be more profitable to let captives live, because their 
labor as slaves was worth more than the meat on their bones. 
Slaves then became serfs and finally free laborers underbidding 
each other for a chance to support themselves. Thus hunger 
was substituted for the clubs of overseers, and trade in labor and 
products was substituted for direct robbery. A scarce medium 
was evolved to assist concentration. Politics grew and laws were 
enacted in the interests of the most powerful graspers, who, as 
a general rule, have had control of legislation in every age. 
What men grasped, in accordance with the laws thus enacted, 
became their private property, and their conventional property 
rights were defended at any cost of money and blood by the 
nations. The more powerful grasped the means of life, in order 
that the unsuccessful graspers should be compelled to sell their 
labor at the low price demanded or go naked, shelterless, and 
hungry. Co-operation increased among the graspers in order 
that their grasping might be more successful. 

A co-operative group could get control of more of the means 
of life and compel a greater number of men to give them their 
labor for the privilege of existence. All they needed to do was 
to manage the toilers, or pay agents to do the managing for them. 
Hired armed men with deadly weapons were necessary to hold 
the toilers to their tasks. Eventually, Custom, Hunger, and 
Want, serving without wages, were sufficient to hold the work- 
ing class to the hardest toil through long hours. Thus the eco- 
nomic system of grasping evolved, so that now we have the great 
co-operative societies and iron and steel corporations and other 
capitalist organizations, and the small individual capitalist who 



THE OTHER ECONOMICS 103 

gives a money wage or a share of the product to his hired 
servants. 

The gun has become a machine-gun in bloody wars, but it 
is still a gun whose ancestor was the war-club. The instruments 
of commercial war are also highly evolved, but their purpose 
is unchanged. The object of trade is not to give but to grasp. 
The little graspers are now sending up cries of complaint against 
the big graspers who form co-operative fraternities among them- 
selves and drive the little graspers out of business. Being 
voters and more numerous they are giving much trouble to con- 
gressmen who do not see how to hold their offices without 
granting free competition in the business of grasping. The 
demand to destroy the trusts is like a demand to destroy the 
machine-guns and to return to the exclusive use of war-clubs. 
Wars were no less deadly or brutal when innumerable small 
clans were slaughtering each other; and the destruction of the 
trusts would no whit lessen the general amount of grasping. 

By grasping a large amount of money, or a scarce medium 
of exchange, it is now possible to sit in a parlor or fashionable 
club-house and cause men to build tenement houses at will, in 
one or two rooms of which each. family of the men who did the 
work of building them, shall be herded — a bare existence their 

pay. 

An economic system of giving, might be crude or more 
highly evolved; but the ways are simple. Generally they can 
be explained to a child. The Other Economics only requires 
society to do in a public way what every member of society is 
now doing in a private manner when any two friends are do- 
nating services to each other after business hours. All the rules 
of The Other Economics are exhibited in family life, in school- 
room, in church and in polite society everywhere outside of the 
industrial pen. On the other hand, the ways of grasping are 
often indirect, hidden, and mysterious to policemen, detectives, 
judges and philosophers. 

Co-operation and competition may be used in both sys- 



104 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

terns of economics. Co-operation is not another economics. 
There may be competition in giving and co-operation in grasp- 
ing. Gangs of thieves are co-operative. If they should combine 
into one great gang, or into a gang including all men, in order 
that all might steal from all while co-operating in business, they 
would still be a gang of thieves. They would appoint a com- 
mittee to distribute the spoils, so that each thief, big and little, 
should receive the ''full amount" that he had stolen, as honor 
among thieves requires. The average thief, of course, could 
not receive more than he could have obtained, if the business 
was not co-operative. 

The ^'co-operative commonwealth,'* as conceived by many 
who use that attractive term, is nothing but a further evolution 
of the business of grasping which we inherited from primitive 
men who inherited it from lower animals. They would get into 
politics to help evolution further evolve that system of business. 
They believe that they — the little graspers — could thus grab 
more than they are now able. Their imagination pictures 
what they could buy if the profits now in the hands of a few 
big graspers, were secured by them. They would get into Con- 
gress and become a co-operative grasping capitalist trust to 
further grasping. Then, by some unexplained acts of congress, 
the few grasping capitalist-trusts would become the Capitalist 
State, grasping for profits to be made out of everybody and given 
back to everybody, — minus the running expenses of the Capitalist 
State. 

I come not to destroy hope in the heart of the toiling 
multitude, but to point a way by which hope may result in 
fruition ! 

If such politicians should buy the property of the trusts and 
all property that should be collectively owned, and pay the pres- 
ent owners with interest-bearing government bonds, they would 
perpetuate a monied aristocracy and the present economic sys- 
tem. If they should attempt to seize all capital by the use of 
force, they would cause destruction and bloodshed, which would 



THE OTHER ECONOMICS 105 

do nothing more than to increase the scarcity and prices of 
goods— also greatly increase the scarcity and prices of working 
men. 

The leap from a capitalistic form of government to a 
''commonwealth" is so confused in the minds of many that they 
think that a different name for a government would result in a 
different economic system. The fact which the people ought to 
know is that the present system of business means poverty for 
the majority regardless of the form of government. And that 
the "gap" is so wide and deep that lies between "producing goods 
for use" and "producing goods for a price," and the differences 
between a grasping system and a system adjusted to giving are 
so radical, that no nation could bridge the "gap" or make the 
change by attempting to do so from the top of the nation, L e,, 
applying it, untried, to the nation as a whole. 

If the trusts and all capitalists should voluntarily combine 
and become the "Capitalist State" such a co-operative common- 
wealth would collapse as soon as formed. Everybody would be 
a partner in the big business concern, demanding his share of 
profits — in goods if not in money. When everybody is getting 
profits out of everybody, no one is getting profits. Profit and 
loss would be equal. Every exploiter would be exploited. It 
would be like two thieves picking each other's pockets or like a 
python swallowing its own tail for food. There is no way to 
wealth for the majority, while conducting business on the short- 
sighted policy of grasping. 

An economic system cannot be operated by one person 
or city or community acting alone. One man laboring to give 
while all others are grasping, would fare as badly as an un- 
business-like pig in a pen, which should get it into his head that 
"It is more blessed to give than to receive" and act in accordance 
with that principle of economics. He could not act like a Chris- 
tian gentleman in anything that related to ^'scarce food" and con- 
tinue to live. 

A society of men organized for co-operative giving, who 



106 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

should give to all men indiscriminately, would soon become 
hungry, naked and shelterless, if all the rest of the world strug- 
gled to grasp rather than give. Ordinary intelligence would 
cause them to confine their gifts to members of ther own busi- 
ness organization. And they could not live and grow in wealth 
by confining tfieir donations of labor and products to members 
of their .own circle, if they did not have possession of a sufficient 
variety of the bounties of nature and sufficient intelligence and 
skill to use them. 

An economic system does not consist in the moral qual- 
ity of motives. A steam gang-plow, managed by two men, plow- 
ing one hundred and twenty acres in a day, will plow more than 
fifty times as many acres in a day as a single plow drawn by 
a span of mules, even if the men managing the steam plow swear 
like demons. 

The Other Economics appeals to intelligent self-interest a 
thousandfold more than the present system, as we shall show. 
The notion that the moral regeneration of society is necessary 
before the peresent economic system can be abandoned shows 
a strange blindness to what human nature is now doing. Un- 
regenerate men will endure toil, and will risk their lives to 
abolish poverty from their families and to defend their loved 
ones. Bad men will lie, steal and kill to escape from poverty. 
They will play the hypocrite, pray in public "to be seen of men," 
give alms, and advocate political and religious doctrines which 
they do not believe, if the salary is sufficient to enable them to 
escape from poverty. Bad men mould outwardly conform to 
The Other Economics, if it should be clearly demonstrated to 
them that they would receive, as Jesus said, "a hundredfold 
more" worldly goods by so doing. And good men could not 
fail to prefer to attain wealth under a business system of giving, 
instead of grasping. 

The regeneration of the hearts of men is of supreme im- 
portance, but it has nothing to do with the working of a steam 
engine or the relation of cause and effect in an economic system. 



THE OTHER ECONOMICS 107 

The best two saints in the Christian calendar could not have made 
forty thousand enameled bricks in a day with hand tools, but 
two sinners and a machine can do so today. Good men and bad 
are now in subjection to the economic system of grasping. Much 
of the wickedness now existing is caused by the system of busi- 
ness which dooms the majority to poverty and the wealthy few 
to the perpetual fear of it. Most men are now infinitey better 
at heart than the evil system that dominates them. 

An economic system' which is an extension of the prin- 
ciple of universal benevolence into business, should be greatly 
desired by all good people. We are the children of our conduct. 
We do not really attain goodness until we have practiced it. 
The owner of a coal mine, who manages his business as it must 
be managed if he avoids being driven out of business and who 
sings and prays himself into a more humane state of mind during 
one hour on Sunday, may be one of those who are ''born again" 
— spiritually he is a crippled infant. He ne^ds the deliverance 
that would give him opportunity to exercise that humane feeling 
throughout the six days of the week. Spiritual powers, as the 
physical, will atrophy unless exercised. A further silence of the 
Church concerning the evils of a business system that prohibits 
the spiritual exercise of ''givng" will seriously damage her future 
potency. 

Hypocrisy if practiced long enough cures itself. When the 
outward act has been so often repeated that it becomes a habit 
the act is performed spontaneously. The inner character of the 
man has at last conformed to the character of the act. Patriot- 
ism which was originally nothing but a selfish desire for per- 
sonal protection against enemies, causing families to unite into 
tribes and tribes into kingdoms, is now a benevolent impulse and 
classed as a virtue. Whatever the original motive may be, the 
outward conduct, when it becomes an established custom, results 
in change of character. The introduction of The Other Eco- 
nomics would therefore greatly ^hasten the spiritual regener- 



108 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

ation of mankind by giving freedom to the spirit of brotherhood, 
now shackled in bonds of poverty. 

The churches cannot accompHsh their mission until they 
accept the economics of Jesus as well as his proofs of immor- 
tality and the all-embracing love of God. They must first have 
the courage to extend the spiritual laws of "the kingdom of 
God" into the business world, as Jesus would have done, if the 
chosen people or their representatives had not rejected him. 

The Other Economics based upon the principle of giving, 
instead of grasping, would, as we will prove, cause the economic 
salvation of the world. It would abolish poverty and give ma- 
terial wealth, in the sense of comforts and necessities, to all 
workmen. We will show the only practical way, as it appears to 
us, by which to cause the nation to accept this revolution without 
bloodshed, and to accept it quickly and gladly. 



CHAPTER II 

TKB OTHER ECONOMICS— CONTINUED 

AN OUTLINE 

1. LABOR AND PRODUCTS SHOULD BE DONATED 

TO THE COMMON GOOD. 

(a) Access to the bounties of nature sufficient for a circle 
of industries. 

(b) The collective control of labor. 

2. PEOPLE ARE CAPITAL. 

(a) Poverty prohibited. 

(b) The aim: wealth and leisure without limit. 

(c) The key: unlimited use of power machinery and labor- 
saving methods. 

3. PRODUCTS DISTRIBUTED ACCORDING TO THE 

RULES REQUIRED BY THE COMMON GOOD. 

(a) Giving to those who co-operate in giving. 

(b) The object-lesson for the benefit of all men. 



Only a brief explanation will be needed to enable one to see 
that benevolence guided by common sense would naturally sug- 
gest the above outline of economics and that self-interest, if suf- 
ficiently intelligent, would accept it. 



109 



EXODUS FROM POVERTY 110 

1.— LABOR AND PRODUCTS SHOULD BE DONATED 
TO THE COMMON GOOD. 

The Creator began the business of the world by donating 
all things ; first his labor and afterward the fruits of his labor. 

Out in the country, every year, some kinds of food supplies 
are rotting on the ground, while they are needed by working- 
class people in the cities not far distant, though the bread win- 
ners are engaged in hard labor through the day. The price 
of these supplies has fallen so low, on account of their abun- 
dance, that no one will transport and distribute them. There is 
no price to be obtained for them that will give a living profit 
after the price is paid for transportation. They cannot be moved 
from the country to the industrious poor in the cities who need 
them, except by donating labor and donating the means of trans- 
portation and distribution. This illustrates conditions in all in- 
dustries. Necessaries and luxuries cannot be produced and 
conveyed to the industrious poor unless the labor and the goods 
are donated. Therefore, it is evident that under an economic 
system aiming to abolish poverty and to give wealth to all, labor 
and products must be simultaneously donated to the common 
good — giving must be substituted for grasping; "giving much" 
must be substituted for "giving little" in order to receive the 
superior reward of "plenty." 

(a) Access to the bounties' of nature sujficient for a circle 
of industries. 

With access only to coal deposits the members of the busi- 
ness organization under The Other Economics could donate to 
each other nothing but the coal that they might be able to dig 
with their hands without the aid of tools. They could not eat 
coal nor use it for clothing. They should therefore have access 
to a sufficient variety of the bounties of nature to produce for 
themselves the tools of industry and the use-goods, including 
modern homes which the workmen are now producing for the 



I THE OTHER ECONOMICS — CONTINUED 111 

rich. They could not continue in business by buying the boun- 
ties of nature and donating labor and products. 

The use of a sufficient variety of the bounties of nature 
should be provided by the national government. 

(b) The collective control of labor. 

We might use the word ownership for a man really owns 
what he controls. "Ye are not your own" is a sentiment to which 
we, do not object when at church and the text is: "Inasmuch 
as ye did it not to the least of these, ye did it not to me," although 
the text refers to water supplies, and food, clothing and shelter. 
The holy text is nothing at all, but a mere business proposition. 
It is a law of the right economic system on earth ; but many good 
men foolishly direct their eyes reverently toward some "New 
Jerusalem above the clouds" where that economic system pre- 
vails in production and distribution of spiritual comforts and 
luxuries. Why not apply the law beneath the clouds as well as 
above them! 

Work-people sell themselves at a very low figure and have 
always done so. They are not their own, except when they are 
out of a jok. The tradition of the auction block, on which their 
ancestors of all colors were sold to the highest bidders, survives 
among the working class so that the occasional opportunity of 
choosing their owners seems like a great emancipation, worth 
all the blood that has been shed to obtain it. We do not see why 
they should object to being collectively owned when they would 
be the collective owners. Workmen need to know that economic 
salvation for them is a social affair, and that liberty cannot be 
obtained by them until they renounce liberty and become the 
"servants of all." 

The subordination of the individual to the common good 
is not regarded as unjust by any nation in time of war. When 
the common defense is supposed to require it, men are drafted 
into the army against their will. If they will not labor and risk 
their lives for what is believed to be for the common good, they 



112 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

are regarded as criminals and punished. Under The Other Eco- 
nomics, all citizens if they would not volunteer, might consist- 
ently be likewise drafted and compelled to assist in the national 
struggle against excessive labor and poverty. The shocking 
element of this kind of patriotism lies in the new class of our 
citizens to be benefited and not in the means employed. But men 
would volunteer, if an object-lesson created by the government 
in an economic experiment station should demonstrate to them 
that under the new system of business wealth and abundant 
leisure could be given to all who donate their services to the 
common good. 

A lone man in the wilderness might be the rightful owner 
of his own labor. He might find roots, wild berries, bugs and 
larger animals that he could, without human assistance, obtain 
and eat. On any higher plane than that he cannot supply his 
own wants. Some reformers tell us that "if a man's labor pro- 
duces little, he should get little, and if he produces much he 
should get much, and that every man should get all he pro- 
duces." It is strange that any sane man can hold this opinion 
seriously. Individuals are not producers. The man who claims 
to have produced cotton did not produce the soil, climate, the 
knowledge of the use of cotton, his food, clothes, agricultural 
implements, nor the market where he sells his cotton. No law 
of equity can make him the rightful owner of the crop, because 
he did not produce it. To discover just how much cotton a man 
really produces he should be placed alone and naked on this 
planet for a year. His present amount of contribution to the 
production of a bale of cotton cannot be estimated by any human 
committee. If it could be estimated and he had it in nothing 
but cotton, he could not live until next pay day. "Ye are not 
jyour own." When we try to be our own we are trying to be 
thieves — robbing both ourselves and society. 

2. PEOPLE ARE CAPITAL. 

If anyone hesitates to admit that people are capital and 



THE OTHER ECONOMICS — CONTINUED 113 

would be convinced of the truth let him attempt to live among 
savages where he can have no communication with civilized 
men. The bounties of nature are there; but they would not 
produce for him a palace, an automobile or paved streets, or 
weave for him broadcloth and fine linen. If he owned all the 
bounties of nature in that region, where would be his capital! 

Capital produces income, for otherwise it would not be 
capital. Let him improve those savages and his income in- 
creases: therefore they are his capital. People, and not the 
sources of raw material, are capital. They produce all income 
except crabapples and other wild fruits and the raw flesh, that 
may be torn from the bones of men and animals. People would 
be recognized as capital under The Other Economics, but people 
are the only real capital now. There has been a fearful waste 
and destruction of real capital under the present system of 
grasping. 

Money produces nothing. It cannot move itself a hair's 
breadth from the place where it lies, much less, make a pair of 
shoes. A steel plant cannot produce an ounce of steel. We have 
been very superstitious about such things. Men produce the 
steel plant and produce the steel by means of it. The primary 
wealth which produces the product, or income, is the people 
who produce and use the tools of industry. The bounties of 
nature were not produced by men. They belong to no man b} 
right of production. Our smartest capitalist standing alone in 
the midst of them could not saw a board, weave a yard of cloth, 
and probably would not be able to kindle a fire. With the earth 
in his possession he would not be a capitalist. People produce 
our incomes. People are capital. 

This point of view, while differing from other economists 
harmonizes with a human system of economics and gratifies our 
common spirit of benevolence ; and self interest, when guided by 
common sense, is also gratified. Self-love is as holy as love- 
Take either from human nature and the result is not a man, but 
a monster. Self-interest and greed are different attributes. Greed 



114 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

wants more than is good and is blind to the wants of others. Self-, 
interest wants enough of nature's goods, without injustice and 
hurt to those who help produce and deliver it. 

A commonwealth regarding people as capital v/ould seek to 
guard and improve people as energetically as capitalists seek 
to. guard and improve what they now falsely regard as capital. 
It would cultivate and protect people as faithfully' as a practical 
farmer cultivates and protects cornfields. He gives them his 
labor, feeds them with fertilizers, and protects them with safety 
devices in the form of fences and scarecrows. So a common- 
wealth or a common-sense-wealth would do when people are 
recognized as capital. Men with intelligent self-interest would 
struggle to give to each other trade secrets, big machinery, 
shorter hours, comfortable homes, opportunities for self-im- 
provement, healthful and uplifting recreations, and all other 
"fertilizers" which promote the development of talent and am- 
bition and thus increase the economic value of individuals to 
society — thus increasing their own wealth. Our government 
under a humane system of economics would become more sen- 
sitive to the overcrowding of people in tenements and shops 
than it now is over "foreign relations" or "national honor." It 
would avoid crowding people like beans in hills too close to 
thrive and would thus more certainly produce healthy and sturdy 
citizens. 

There is a man seeking work. He is poorly nourished and 
poorly sheltered. His wife and little ones whom he loves more 
than himself are liable to be thrown out into the streets for non- 
payment of rent. He is in despair and is thinking of becoming 
a consumer only, and not a producer of goods. He is tempted to 
become a beggar or a thief. Under our present inhuman system 
he is idle capital going to ruin. And he is liable to ruin much 
primary wealth which is employed, for his example will in- 
fluence other men and he may organize a gang of thieves. If 
he were a steam engine our present system would give him 
shelter and whatever he might need to increase his effectiveness. 



THE OTHER ECONOMICS — CONTINUED 115 

Under humane economics, intelligent self-interest would demand 
the improvement of people to the utmost. The moral nature of 
men would not have to be changed before accepting The Other 
Economics ; while on the other hand we believe that the abolition 
of poverty would hasten the moral regeneration of all men. 

(a) Poverty Prohibited. 

This follows from the proposition that "people are capital." 
Poverty injures people. 

Even at the present time there is a degree of poverty which 
is considered criminal. If a family should build a "shanty" on 
one of our fashionable avenues and go naked, or half naked, 
they would be arrested and sent to prison or into its twin-horror, 
the slum. There is no reason for not placing the standard of 
prohibited or criminal poverty a hundred times higher, except 
the existence of the inhuman economic system whose existence 
depends upon the perpetuation of poverty. On account of our 
business system which most good men consent to, the standard 
of criminal poverty is very low in all Christian countries, as low 
for that matter, as in the heathen lands. In sections of cities 
where work-people live, nudity on the streets is not criminal, if 
it is partly covered by rags. Under a humane economic system 
the government would arrest the man who compelled his family 
to walk instead of furnishing them with an automobile. The 
standard of living which one. would have to adopt in order to 
avoid being arrested as a criminal, or being sent to a reformatory 
institution, would be, at least, vastly higher under The Other 
Economics when the value of people surpasses the value of 
things. 

Poverty is purely a social disease, capable of being cured. 
We are criminals when we willingly accept it for ourselves or 
for others. It represses mental growth and injures the body. 
It causes war, theft and most of the sins and sufferings of 
mankind. Contentment with poverty leads hack toward the 
cave. In a government aiming to attain the highest attainable 



116 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

standards of living for its members, one who would not co- 
operate for this purpose would soon be considered an anarchist 
and law-breaker and the chiefest enemy to his country. He 
would be "insulting the flag" which would then float over "liv- 
ing issues" in the fullest sense of the term. 

Theft was made a criminal offense against society, because 
that direct method of getting something for nothing, by becom- 
ing common, would ruin business. The business necessity of 
forbidding theft came first and the moral sentiment against 
theft came afterward. Under The Other Economics, refusing 
generally to receive donations of wealth would ruin business and 
cause production and distribution to cease. Men would ruin 
business by persisting in poverty and dirt. They would injure 
the capital of the nation when injuring themselves; for men 
would be capital. 

(b) The aim: wealth and leisure without limit. 

The Almighty is wealthy. We do not sin in aspiring to be 
like Him. But He never would consent to becoming rich by the 
suffering of others. It is this cruelty in present-day wealth-get- 
ting that gives it its "unrighteous" stigma. Such wealth can be 
sanctified and regenerated now if it be turned in the direction of 
The Other Economics and become active in securing "wealth for 
all." 

While producing a sufficient supply of necessaries for its 
members, the new economics should use the surplus labor power 
in producing all innocent luxuries of which the bounties of 
nature and human skill are capable. The struggle should be 
to raise the minimum standard of living to that which is now en- 
joyed by the most fortunate. 

They who denounce luxury and leisure of the sane sort 
know that they are not evils for themselves. Those re- 
ligious sects which have made a virtue of poverty and a sin of 
luxury worshiped a false god and have usually changed their 
idol when wealth came their way. Those rich people who try 



THE OTHER ECONOMICS CONTINUED 117 

to believe that they believe that luxury and leisure would be dis- 
ostrous to the poor, are only trying to make themselves comfort- 
able in the presence of impoverishment and the toiling multi- 
tudes. Generally, in our country, the rich have experienced both 
poverty and wealth. We have not yet heard from any one of 
them who prefers for his children, poverty and long hours of 
daily labor by which to supply a "bare subsistence." 

The increase of wealth increases the desire for wealth and 
the opportunities for leisure for higher pursuits, which wealth 
provides. It was not wealth and luxury that caused the decay of 
ancient civilizations — but its concentration. It was caused by 
the poverty of the masses, and by the system of repression and 
plunder, by which the wealth of the few was obtained — the 
same system, by the way, that we are today struggling to per- 
petuate. No millionaire has enough. Thou shalt be forever dis- 
contented, is a law of progress. Material wealth is the lowest 
form of wealth. When physical needs are supplied discontent 
for intellectual and spiritual wealth will be found driving the 
race to a higher plane of existence. 

The desire for wealth is in the working-class. When their 
poverty is abolished, their sleeping ambition for nobler wealth 
will be awakened. Our millionaires and the common crowd below 
them who are struggling to rise and are crushing under their feet 
the weaker — ^all of whom would fight their way to the top if they 
could — ^must understand that The Other Economics would not 
cause any class to be less rich than it is now. The claim that 
"labor now gets only about one-third of the wealth that it pro- 
duces," ought never hereafter to appeal powerfully to the ma- 
jority of the intelligent working class. The inner soul of the 
lowest wage earner in the slum should aspire to more than that. 
When the man who has been getting a dollar a day gets three 
dollars, his ambition expands and becomes more nearly human. 

There are, of course, physical and mental wrecks, caused 
by poverty and despair, who are exceptions to the rule. But 
after a few months the working man, who has a family for 



118 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

whom he has ambitions, feels the pinch of poverty more after 
his wages have been increased than he did before. This "get- 
all-you-produce" appeal does not kindle the enthusiasm of the 
working class along sane or safe directions; and the capitalist 
and students of economics know that it is foolish while business 
is conducted under a "grasping" system of economics. They 
know that profits, on the average, cannot be much reduced 
whether business is conducted by capitalists or congressman un- 
der Stand-Pat, Progressive or Socialist Party unless goods be 
produced without prices, profits or wages and produced for 
"use." 

(c) The key : unlimited tise of power machinery and labor- 
saving methods. 

At Niagara one man can start or halt a power equal to that 
of two-hundred and fifty thousand men. It is estimated that 
more than a thousand million man-power, in the form of hydro- 
electric power, can be developed on unnavigable streams in the 
United States. This power can be conveyed on wires over long 
distances and set to work, with some human assistance, pro- 
viding necessaries and luxuries to supply human wants. If 
men were not in despair, believing that the economic system, 
under which we are compelled to do business, demands the con- 
tinuance of about the present amount of consumption goods in 
proportion to the population, we would be thrown into great 
commotion by this new discovery. We would be more joyful 
than we are now when the election returns show that the Presi- 
dent shall stand on our party platform during the next four 
years and may add or deduct a cent or two per pound or per 
yard to the price of what we buy. 

This new labor power will work day and night without 
wages and without weariness. It can do most of the work of 
building dams and manufacturing machinery. What it cannot 
do, steam power can. Few men are needed to handle levers and 
throw switches. Electric motors, big and little, manufactured 



THE OTHER ECONOMICS — CONTINUED 119 

by the aid of power machinery, can do nearly all kinds of hard 
work. To this new working force we may add the possible 
multiplication of steam power machines to which there is no 
known limit. This possible productivity of labor by means of 
applied science, could transform the raw materials contained in 
nature into articles of necessity and luxury sufficient to give 
wealth to all who assist in producing and distributing it. 

While that would be an unendurable '"overproduction" un- 
der present laws of business, adjusted as they are to perpetu, 
ating scarcity for prices, under The Other Economics which aims 
to donate wealth to those who work and adjust the laws of busi- 
ness to producing "plenty," existing machines for increasing the 
output of labor could be multiplied, without overproduction of 
machines or their products, until every necessity and luxury 
that men and machines can create are given to all who assist in 
their manufacture and distribution. This, as we will prove in 
following chapters, would raise the minimum standard of liv- 
ing until it would be equal to that now enjoyed by the most for- 
tunate. 

3. PRODUCTS DISTRIBUTED ACCORDING TO THE 
RULERS REQUIRED BY THE COMMON GOOD. 

This follows naturally from the donation of labor and prod- 
ucts to the common good. A donor relinquishes all legal claims 
on what he has donated, for otherwise it would not be a donation. 
Whatever the donors receive from the commonwealth would be 
a free gift and not the payment of a debt. There would be no 
prices and hence no profits or wages. 

Special donations by the commonwealth to individuals 
should reward their past and encourage their future usefulness. 
A committee of experts could find a way to distribute rewards 
of merit with greater regard to individual interests than is now 
possible under the present system which tends to purchase places 
of honor and fame with money. When the minimum standard 
of living shall include all necessaries and all ordinary luxuries, 



120 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

those luxuries, which would be rare, on account of the small 
amount of material in nature, or the great amount of skill re- 
quired in producing them, could be used as special donations to 
individuals for reward of merit. Even more potent would be 
genuine marks of honor bearing with them public esteem and 
title, for after these even our multimillionaires strive. 

(a) Giving to those who co-operate in giving. 

A business organization donating labor and products to the 
world of graspers outside of it would soon have nothing to do- 
nate. All products should be retained for distribution and use 
among the work-people. We will see in our further discussion 
that under The Other Economics industrial pursuits, now of such 
tremendous importance, would occupy so little of any one's time 
that he would regard it in the light of recreation and a prepara- 
tion for any loved occupation to which his natural talents might 
be adapted. We will also see that Fraternal Individualism can 
be attained equally well, and better, under the suggested system. 

(b) The object lesson for the benefit of all m.en, 

A business organization under The Other Economics formed 
and directed by the government, at first glance, seems to be 
"class-legislation" or "class-preference" and to be self-centered 
and most heartless in its relation to the world outside of it ; but it 
is a government experiment for the good of all and the only 
peaceable way of escaj)e from the present conditions and as such 
would justify all the seeming special aid given it. 

The members of such an experiment station as is being sug- 
gested do not trade with outsiders nor among themselves. They 
neither buy nor sell. There is no "graft," for the right man in 
the right place is desired by all ; and having donated his labor he 
is not the subject of envy. They are building homes, — palaces 
if they can, — for every one of their families, while industrious 
families outside of the Station employees, are living in cellars, 
garrets and hovels. They are making automobiles until every 



THE OTHER ECONOMICS — CONTINUED 121 

family within the organization has one or access to one. The 
industrious poor of the outside might come to them and beg for 
work but they must refuse to employ them, for otherwise it 
would retard the demonstration. Their circle of industries has 
not yet proven its powers and is not prepared to enlarge. The 
great change would come later. Should they receive a new mem- 
ber they must build and provide for him. When they have raised 
the minimum standard of living for their members as high as 
possible with labor saving machines and methods, they will be 
an object-lesson to the world showing what the nations could do 
by adjusting themselves to that system of business by the prac- 
tical method of aborption. The employees in this public enter- 
prise are preparing a revolution without bloodshed and should 
be segregated and defended while doing so even if it required 
the combined forces of army and navy to protect this form of 
public benefaction. When declared a success, the national ad- 
justment to The Other Economics would give real and valuable 
employment to public servants and experts. 

The Other Economics is not an impracitcal dream unless we 
say that Jesus was a mere dreamer ; for He who was a mechanic 
and philosopher whose mental powers were so great that the 
majority of the scholars of Europe and America regard him as 
both human and divine, said, that the material wealth of the 
people would be "a hundred fold" greater under a system of 
business whose ruHng principle is to "give" and not to grasp. 
Moreover the form of industrial enterprise would conform to 
those institutions which, above all else, are our national pride 
and glory, — the home, the church and the public school. 

When it is thus demonstrated that under The Other Econ- 
omics those who are now low wage earners could live like mil- 
lionaires then a bloodless revolution will be already accom- 
plished. 



CHAPTER III 

OUB BESOUROES 

Among those who worship false gods should be classed such 
as assume that Providence is pleased with poverty. 

We produce in the United States eighty per cent, of the 
world's supply of cotton; while we cultivate for the production 
of cotton only about three acres in one hunderd of the area of 
our cotton states.^ The present cotton crop of the world, with 
the best methods of cultivation, could be produced in one-fif- 
teenth of the state of Texas. There are vast areas capable of 
cotton cultivation in South America, Africa and Asia. One 
company, recently organized, has possession of a half-million 
acres in Korea for the purpose of growing cotton. The time is 
not distant when with the same machinery and with wages at 
twenty ents a day, or less, Asia will drive us out of the cotton 
industry if the present economic system, through our blind stu- 
pidity, continues. More than enough cotton to supply the race 
can be produced, as far as the bounties of nature are concerned. 

Recent inventions make it possible to produce linen as 
cheaply as cotton. Flax has this advantage: it can be grown in 
all climates where agriculture is possible. Sheep and wool can 
be indefinitely multiplied. There are no known limits imposed 
by nature to the production of natural and artificial silk. 

Within a radius of fifty miles from Boston there is enough 
uncultivated land suitable for farming to feed three million peo- 
ple and to have a surplus for export.^ No one knows the possible 
productivity of an acre of land. Agricultural colleges and the 

1 Distribution of Products, Atkinson, p. 49. 

2 Sylvester Baxter in The Outlook, Sept. 24, 1910. 

122 



OUR RESOURCES 123 

United States Department of Agriculture have demonstrated that 
when the soil is less productive it is not the soil, but the farmer's 
intelligence, that is exhausted. Foreigners, who have been ac- 
customed to obtain ,crops on land that has been under cultivation 
for a thousand years, have been coming into New England to 
take the places of those farmers who do not know how to prevent 
the soil from becoming poor. The yield of corn per acre in New 
Hampshire is more than that of any other state. Connecticut 
is second in rank. Massachusetts is ahead of Illinois and Kansas. 
The value of agricultural products in Massachusetts increased 
thirty-eight per cent, during the ten years between 1895 and 1905. 
By the right selection of seed and treatment of soil, corn yields 
one hundred bushels per acre, and corn improvement is in its 
infancy.^ The average yield of potatoes in Prussia is four hun- 
dred bushels per acre. 

By a better selection of seeds alone the product per acre of 
all crops could be more than doubled. That would add to our 
tillable soil another America. And still another could be added 
by bringing into general use the best methods of fertilization 
and rotation of crops already known. 

Meanwhile, most of continental United States is really 
unoccupied. If Texas had a population per square mile equal to 
that of Massachusetts, its population would be just about equal 
to the present population of the United States. 

The primitive and laborious method of fertilizing the soil 
is no longer necessary. The sources of supply from chemical 
fertilizers are inexhaustible. The manufacture of lime-nitro- 
gen requires but Ittle labor. A fifty-three thousand horse-power 
hydro-electric plant for the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen in 
Norway was so successful that it was enlarged to two hundred 
thousand horse-power, or one million man-power, and other large 
plants are preparng for work in other countries including 
Japan.^ 



3 The Technical World, Sept. 1910. 

4 Ibid, June 1909. 



124 , EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

Some crops are inoculated with nitrogen bacteria which 
extracts nitrogen from the air and feed it to the roots of 
plants.^ When introduced they attend to the work of enlarging 
their numbers. When their aged ones die their remains are al- 
most pure nitrogen. We are only beginning to become ac- 
quainted with the bounties of nature. But we know too much 
already for any practical use under the present economic system. 

It is now known that ''one acre of water, if well cultivated, 
will yield more food than ten acres of fertile land; the world 
might be fed from the ocean alone. "^ The cultivation of oysters 
is now an established industry. Fish culture is no longer an ex- 
periment. Fish ponds can be indefinitely multiplied. The meat 
of the hippopotamus is said to be equal to beef. These animals, 
which need no care, could be multiplied in all marshes and slug- 
gish streams where the climate is not too cold. With cold storage 
and swift transportation on land and seas this kind of meat alone 
would be enough to supply the world with as much meat as it 
ought to eat. 

Game farming has been successful. Deer, elks, goats and 
buffaloes in the two hundred and fifty million acres of moun- 
tainous and desert land in our country, valueless for cultivation, 
could rear themselves. Pheasant farming is more profitable than 
poultry farming. With little assistance from the state, some wild 
birds whose flesh is greatly desired would multiply marvellously 
and would find food and shelter for themselves. It is estimated 
that four million buffaloes accumulated on our western plains 
while Indians were killing them for meat, clothing and sport. 
Many varieties of undomesticated animals, big and little, sup- 
port themselves and would be enough to supply meat for the 
whole population of the country. It would only be necessary to 
protect sufficient breeding grounds. This could be done by cer- 



5 Ibid, Dec 1910. 

6 Recent Economic Changes, Wells, p. 399. 



OUR RESOURCES 125 

tain "wards" of our government to whom this kind of labor is 
congenial. 

By rearing cattle on the "factory plan" they can be matured 
on one-fifth the amount of land. This would be, as far as cattle 
is concerned, equal to the addition of four Americas to our 
country. Why not employ the same amount of expenses in an 
effort to "expand" the comforts of our people as has been spent 
by the government in the past in "expanding our territory" ! 

The present economic system of grasping, and not the boun- 
ties of nature, is responsible for the scarcity of food supplies. 
We have mentioned the fact that 26,710,390 acres in our country 
is owned by fifty-four individuals and foreign syndicates.*^ 
In 1900 one-fourth of the total acreage of the United States was 
owned by .0006 of the population. The area so owned is greater 
than the combined area of Germany and Great Britain. One- 
fourth of the cultivated land, as heretofore mentioned, is owned 
by a handful of persons whose total number is less than a good 
sized suburb of an eastern city.^ These vast estates are poorly 
cultivated and are mostly held for speculation. Nevertheless 
there is a continual struggle against "overproduction" in all lines 
of business conducted most scientifically ; because the number of 
people who cannot get as much as they need, is not large enough 
to justify greater production. It is this fact that brings confu- 
sion to the advocates of the "single tax" theory. A great amount 
of production spells ruin in respective markets. Mr. George 
provides for greater production but fails to provide for distri- 
bution. Many industries can produce more than they can sell 
now. In order to be of merit, the ideas of Mr. George must not 
only produce more product but must show us how people can get 
a "price" for products when they become plentiful. 

Coal deposits now known are enough to supply the world for 
a thousand years.^ Half of the coal is wasted in mining. Eighty 



^ Privilege and Democracy, Howe, p. 38. 

8 Ibid, p. 43. 

9 Modern Industrial Progress, Cochrane, p. 325. 



126 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

per cent, of its energy is wasted in burning. Extra steam power, 
which has been permitted to blow off as exhaust, is, in some 
places, being piped into a steam turbine where it is used to gener- 
ate electric power to be conveyed on wires fifty or more miles 
away. ^^ Gases lost in the burning of coal can be captured and 
burned under boilers. The utilization of waste power alone 
would be sufficient to prevent the overwork of men, women and 
children and to manufacture for them luxuries equal to those 
enjoyed by their employers. 

The United States government has been examining public 
lands to find their value.^^ Government experts have discovered 
that North Dakota contains about four times, Wyoming about 
three times, Colorado about three times, and Montana about two 
times as much coal as Pennsylvania. The United States Geolog- 
ical Survey places the amount of coal available for mining in 
North Dakota, at five thousand milHon tons. This is more than 
seventeen times the amount of coal that has been mined in the 
United States since its discovery in this country. 

Recent machines for digging and drying peat for fuel can 
do their work quickly and with little human labor. The United 
States Geological Survey has made a test showing that "peat is 
superior to many good bituminous coals for operating the gas en- 
gine, that coming power-giant of modern industry. Peat contains 
slightly over one per cent, of nitrogen ; the value of the ammonia 
as a by-product will pay the expense of extracting the gas, leav- 
ing the latter as clear profit.''^^ pg^^ makes the best kind of coke 
for iron smelting, steel making and copper refining. It can be 
utihzed as a fertilizer ingredient and as an absorbent. In Michi- 
gan, paper is manufactured from it, in Denmark and Sweden, 
alcohol, and in Germany artificial wood. Professor Davis, of 
the United States Geological Survey, estimates the "peat area" 
of the United States at more than seven million acres with an 



10 The Technical World, Dec 1910. 

11 Ibid, March 1910. 

12 Ibid, June 1910. 



OUR RESOURCES 127 

average depth of nine feet. This amount converted into machine 
peat bricks at its present market value, together with its by- 
products, would be sufficient to buy all farm property in the 
United States and all capital employed in manufacture. 

The earth is large and we have only recently begun to drill 
for oil and natural gas, which can add indefinitely to our fuel 
supply. 

Alcohol is being made from sawdust and is better and 
cheaper for light and heat than anthracite coal.^^ Half of every 
tree is wasted by lumbermen, which could be used for making 
alcohol. Twenty-two gallons of alcohol can be made from one 
ton of sawdust. The process of manufacture is simple and only 
occupies one hour. It is estimated that alcohol potatoes culti- 
vated in Germany yield enough alcohol per acre to plow that 
acre for two centuries. 

In the Cobalt mining district in Canada, five thousand horse- 
power is obtained from particles of air in falling water, which 
are trapped and confined and liberated under pressure. One 
man can take care of the generating end of the plant and the cost 
is too small to be considered. Compressed air is sold at Cobalt 
in the same manner that electricity and gas are sold elsewhere.^^ 

The electrical age has arrived. It is estimated that two 
hundred and thirty million horse-power, which can work day 
and night through all future years, is unused and could be de- 
veloped on unnavigable streams in the United States. This 
possible mechanical power could be converted into electrical 
power and conveyed to run motors in homes, on farms, and in 
factories, furnishing light, heat and power ; but all this is a small 
matter compared with the power that can be obtained from water 
current, without dams, in streams, waves and tides, and from 
wind and sunlight. 

Herr Emil Pein, an engineer of Hamburg, has mastered the 
problem of utilizing tidal action. The works are to be at Heanm 



13 Ibid, Oct. 1910. 

14 The World's Work, Aug., 1910. 



128 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

on the coast of Schleswig and it is estimated that the electricity 
to be generated will supply nearly the whole of Schleswig-Hol- 
stein north of the Kiel canal. 

Wind-generating electricity power machines are in success- 
ful operation. They are wind mills with a device making the 
speed of the wheel constant whatever the speed of the wind. 
The control of the field circuit of the dynamo is maintained by 
the resistances worked automatically. Electricity can be stored 
for use when the wind does not blow. ^^ A German company is 
manufacturing these wind mills which are gradually coming into 
use. The apparatus is entirely automatic and requires no atten- 
tion except in storm, when it is necessary to reduce the sail area 
of the wind wheel which can be done quickly. Probably while 
man endures on the earth there will be no "wind famine." 

The supply of sunlight is inexhaustible. Ericsson, who in- 
vented the Civil War monitors, demonstrated in 1868 that the 
rays of the sun give one horse-power per square yard per hour. 
This power can be set to work for us by a device recently in- 
vented. It is an arrangement of reflectors gathering the rays of 
the sun into a focus. The production of thermo-electricity de- 
pends upon the fact that in a circuit of two different metals a 
current of electricity may be made to flow by maintaining the 
two junction points at different temperatures. This is done by 
the heat of the sun's rays. Electricity is stored when the sun is 
shining, for use when it does not shine. The apparatus is auto- 
matic. It starts automatically when the sun begins to shine, and 
automatically severs connection between the separator and the 
storage battery whenever the sun is not shining. ^^ 

A recently invented water wheel is submerged in swift 
current, with its axis in a vertical position. It has jointed vanes 
which fold against the current on one side and open to the cur- 
rent on the other side. This causes the wheel to revolve, and the 



15 Popular Electricity, July 1909 ; also Popular Mechanics, July, 1909. 
18 Popular Electricity, April 1910; Modern Electrics, Dec. 1909- 



OUR RESOURCES 129 

deeper it is submerged the greater will be the force of the revo- 
lutions. With such water wheels, the mechanical force that could 
be generated in the rapids below Niagara Falls, would be incal- 
culably greater than that which could be obtained at the Falls. 
Such wheels could be submerged at small distances from each 
other, over the whole length of the rapids. They can be used, 
without the expense of building dams, wherever there is a swift 
current and wherever the tide ebbs and flows. Another recent 
device in the form of a V-shaped flume can be used on any navi- 
gable stream without interfering with navigation.!^ 

The supply of iron ore is inexhaustible. The report of the 
International Geographical Congress on iron ore gives the total 
amount of the reserve of the world, as known, as twenty-two 
billion four hundred and eight million tons.^^ Nearly one- 
half of the known supply is in America. The larger part of the 
world is inhabited by people who make little use of iron. Most 
of the known iron ore deposits in China lie neglected. At Du- 
rango, Mexico, a big hill rising out of a level plateau, shows three 
hundred and fifty million tons which is of quality well adapted 
to the manufacture of steel.^^ JOn account of its abundance, 
where it can be easily discovered, the search for iron ore deposits 
have been very superficial, even in our own country, and we place 
no value on low grade ores which could be used if necessary. 

The cement age is here and concrete can take the place of 
iron and steel for many purposes. 

One-third of the world's supply of copper comes from Butte 
Hill, Montana ; it is believed that three thousand million dollars' 
worth are yet to be obtained there. For only about a hundred 
years, has industry, in the most advanced nations, made a large 
demand for the baser metals. On account of their abundance the 
search for them has been superficial; yet there is evidence that 
the bounties of nature contain enough of the metals now used in 



17 The Technical World, June 1909 and Jan. 191 1. 

18 Popular Mechanics, Nov. 1910. 

19 Ibid, April 191 1. 



130 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

the essential industries to supply mankind for many thousand 
years. They are amply sufficient to enable us to conduct bus- 
iness under The Other Economics. 

Mr. Herbert Smith, Commissioner of Corporations, in a re- 
cent report on the lumber industry of the United States, estimates 
that there is standing timber enough in our country to build 
frame houses for a thousand million people, ^o There are in the 
forests of the United States about two thousand eight hundred 
billion of board-feet of timber. If sawed into lumber it would 
be enough to load a freight train about a million miles long. 

A lodging place on a cellar floor without mattress and cov- 
ering in Chicago costs money on account of the scarcity of 
homes ; but this is not because of the scarcity of building mate- 
rials provided by the Creator of the earth. 

Land denuded of timber can be reforested. But why re- 
forest! Wooden houses are too perishable and cost too much 
labor for repairs. Materials for building houses of brick, con- 
crete or stone are enough to give a palace to every family on the 
earth and the supply is inexhaustible. 

The bounties of nature and applied science are ready and 
patiently waiting the mists of economic error to lift from the 
deluded minds of men. 



CHAPTER IV 

UkBOB SAVING MACHINES 

With our knowledge of present applied science, hard menial 
labor is the badge of economic stupidity. 

One woman making embroidery manages a machine having 
one hundred and forty needles, and each needle produces replicas 
of the same design. ^ Her work is equal to that of about three 
thousand women making embroidery a hundred years ago. An 
automatic carpet sewing machine, a compact little stitching ap- 
paratus, running on something resembling a miniature elevated 
railroad, will fasten together ten yards of carpet in one minute, 
entirely dispensing with hand labor in this roughest and most 
trying of all fabrics.^ 

Fall River is a mere dot on the map ; yet it contains machines 
which, with some human assistance, turn out about eight hun- 
dred and sixty million yards of cloth per year ; and in the print 
works cloth enough is printed each year to wrap around the 
world three times.^ One person can attend to more than a hun- 
dred spindles, each making twenty thousand revolutions per 
minute, thus attending to about twenty thousand times as many 
revolutions of the spindle during the day, as our grandmothers 
could do working with the spinning wheel. One weaver can 
manage twenty looms, each equal to twenty hand looms, and is 
doing the work of four hundred former weavers. "The looms 
feed themselves with bobbins, weave ornamental designs and stop 



iThe Nineteenth Century Magazine, March IQIO. 

2 The Progress of Invention, Byrn, p. 192. 

3 America at Work, Frazer. 



131 



132 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

instantly when a thread breaks so that there may be no flaw in 
the fabric." 

In the best canning factories a machine, with some human 
assistance, can automatically fill twelve thousand cans in an hour ; 
in a publishing house a machine can bind eighteen books per 
minute; in some newspaper offices a machine prints, cuts, 
pastes, folds, and counts ninety-six thousand eight-page news- 
paper in an hour. In Canada we may see a few men and a 
machine laying railway ties and steel rails at the rate of two 
miles a day. In Chicago, animal's throats are cut at the rate 
of one in three seconds, and about fifteen minutes later the 
slaughtered animal is fresh meat in the cooling room. 

In the Lake Superior region a few men and a machine take 
iron ore from a pit and load fifty railway cars in an hour. The 
ore is handled by machines and is not touched by human hands 
until it is delivered to the iron and steel mills in Pittsburgh, or 
elsewhere. In one of the best steel plants a man in a cage, with- 
out real labor, handles six hundred tons of iron in an hour and 
feeds six blast furnaces-^ Another man in a kind of a pulpit, 
without doing any hard work, can open any one of several 
furnace doors and take out a glowing ingot, weighing five thou- 
sand pounds, and place it on an automatic machine which carries 
it to the continuous rolls, which automatically pass it through 
smaller and smaller openings until it is reduced to the desired 
sizes. When the bars are coming out of the rolls, the flying 
shears, another automatic machine, cuts them off in the desired 
lengths; the cutting is done in a fraction of a second, and the 
shears retreat and come back for another cut in less than one 
second. 

A traveling crane lets down a pair of magnets and loads a 
railway car with steel rails in three minutes. One man can 
charge an open-hearth furnace with iron ore, or scrap iron, in a 
few seconds. One man can manage machinery that can lift and 



4 Modern Industrial Progress, Cochrane. 



LABOR SAVING MACHINES 133 

carry a load equal to several railway engines. A forty-six ton 
car of coal can be loaded by machinery in thirty-six seconds.^ 

On some great farms two men and a machine can plow one 
hundred and twenty-five acres in a day. A few men and a 
machine can plow, harrow, seed and cover seventy-five acres in 
a day, and in harvest can cut, thresh and put in bags the grain 
of seventy-five acres in a day.^ A grain elevator lets down 
spouts upon a train load of grain and draws up into place of 
storage ten thousand bushels in an hour. 

When the average wage earner assists a machine which 
grinds and mixes white lead for paint his labor is made equal to 
that of thirty-one former men : with a machine for making litho- 
graphs he is fifty men; with four-penny nails he is one hundred 
and thirty men ; sawing marble into slabs he is nine hundred and 
twenty-three men ; making settings for gold pins he is two hun- 
dred and fifty men; making center wheels for watches he is 
three hundred and twenty-six men ; punching balance cocks from 
sheets of brass he is two thousand and twenty men ; making iron 
bolts he can now make as many in a day as a blacksmith could 
formerly do in a year — but he is only one former man when he 
receives pay for his work.^ 

A small portable machine for scrubbing floors derives the 
power which propels the brushes from the nearest lamp socket. 
Surrounding the brushes is a ring which carries the water along 
with the machine and eliminates the necessity of mopping up. ^ 
There are air motors for cleaning windows which do the work 
quickly and more perfectly than can be done by hand. The new 
concrete potato peeling machine can peel and wash a half bushel 
of potatoes in two minutes. 

In the chapter on Servantless Palaces we will show that by 



5 America at Work, Frazer. 

6 Ibid. 

7 Thirteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor on Hand 

and Machine Labor. 

8 Popular Electricity, Aug. 1910. 



134 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

the use of the best labor saving machines and method there would 
be nothing resembling labor for the housewife to do. 

Under The Other Economics all city scavengers could live 
like cultured gentlemen. Some cities are now using a motor pro- 
pelled combination street sweeper and sprinkler which sweeps and 
scrubs the street in one operation. ^ The machine is controlled by 
one man and has the power of twenty-five horses. In Hamburg, 
Germany, no hand tools are used in unloading and disposing of 
the refuse. The pity is that under our present unscientific sys- 
tem of economics human beings beg to do this kind of work in 
order to subsist. 

The superintendent of the Boston Ice Company has perfect- 
ed an ice harvester which cuts through fifty feet of ice in one 
minute. ^^ 

In picking cranberries a mechanical device makes the labor 
of one man equal to that of eleven former men. The bushes are 
tangled, but the tool does its work successfully. ^^ In some 
orange packing houses machines carefully handle the oranges, 
clean them with brushes, grade them, separate them into sizes, 
weigh them, cut and print the tissue paper wrappers, wrap them 
in paper and place them in boxes. In the San Joaquin Valley dis- 
trict, which produces more than half the raisins used in the 
United States, machines automatically remove the stems from 
the dried grapes, take out the seeds, clean the raisins and press 
them into boxes.^^ f^g boxes are made by nearly automatic 
machinery. The newest machinery for harvsting potatoes digs 
and sorts them and incidentally pulverizes the soil. 

'There are hulling machines that will handle a thousand 
bushels of peas in a day; there are rotary separators that will 
grade into sizes six hundred bushels in a day ; there are corn cut- 
ting machines that will remove the green corn from the cobs, 



9 Popular Mechanics, Aug. 1910. 

10 Ibid, Dec 1910- 

11 Ibid, Nov. 1910. 

12 The Outlook, Nov. 1909. 



LABOR SAVING MACHINES 135 

at the rate of four thousand ears per hour ; corn silking machines 
that will remove silk and other refuse from corn, and an auto- 
matic can-filling machine, having a capacity of twelve thousand 
cans per hour. There are equally effective machines for han- 
dling other vegetables."^^ 

Hod carriers are doing a work that would not be tolerated 
under The Other Economics, for the electric hod carrier can 
shoot its load of brick and mortar to upper floors. We often 
send petty criminals to ''the stone pile" to break stones into small 
pieces with a hammer. In every section of the civilized world 
good men are also doing this slavish work, while helping to pave 
streets and to macadamize country roads. In some christian 
countries women earn the privilege of existence, by this. work. 
Absolute waste ! There is a steam power crusher that makes the 
labor of one man equal to that of six hundred men. ^^ Common 
sense ought long ago to have displaced with machinery five hun- 
dred and ninety-nine out of every six hundred such slaves and 
re-employed them in making luxuries for themselves. 

The labor wasted in using the pick and shovel on the earth's 
surface and under it, is enough to produce homes and provide 
short hours of labor for all, if it were saved and re-employed with 
the best labor-saving devices: for there are digging machines, 
small and great, adapted to almost every variety of work. An 
excavating machine recently constructed at the Bergen Point 
Iron Works, New Jersey, has the power of a hundred horses 
and runs by its own power and not on tracks. It can be managed 
by three men and has the power of six of the largest steam 
shovels combined. Its cutting wheel has a width of ten feet and 
its conveyor, with a speed of two hundred feet per minute, de- 
livers the earth to drays or cars. There are trackless trucks, 
having an unlimited range of travel, and moving with their own 



13 Modern Industrial Progress, Cochrane, 328. 

14 The Social Unrest, Brooks, p. 177. 



136 EXODUS FROM POVERTT 

power, which can carry ten or more tons of earth and dump it 
into the places where it is wanted.^^ 

A recently invented track-grading machine grades and bal- 
lasts railway tracks and does the work of lifting jacks and gangs 
of tampers and shovelers. ^^ A pneumatic plow, scraper and 
spreader for railroad work does the work of twelve hundred men. 
This miachine is used for work on the Panama Canal.^^ One 
man operates the machine thus doing the work of twelve hun- 
dred former men. 

There are machines for digging post holes which enable 
one man, almost without labor, to dig as many, as twelve or fif- 
teen former men. ^^ A traction engine and steam shovel can go 
by its own power almost anywhere and dig ditches, gravel pits 
or cellars. Trench digging and trench-filling machines are in 
use in some western towns. Two men can manage a machine 
that pulls stumps like teeth, clearing three acres in a day and 
piling the stumps in heaps for burning.i^ 

There are self-dumping barges which unload two hundred 
tons of earth or rock in a few minutes. ^^ Ten tons is only one 
shovelful for the shovel used in deepening the channel of the 
lower Detroit river. Governor Hughes, of New York, in his 
annual message in 1906 mentioned a machine in use on the Erie 
Barge Canal which enabled three men to do the work previously 
done by eight hundred men. Three men and the machine could 
take out more than three thousand cubic yards of earth in eight 
hours. 

Most road building in the United States has been done with 
slow tools and without expert supervision, and the work was 
slavish. According to the estimate by the Director of the United 



15 Popular Electricity, July 1909. Modern Industrial Progress, 

Cochrane, p. 140- 

16 The Technical World, Feb. 1911- 
1^ Ibid, Dec- 1910. 

18 Ibid, Aug. 1910. 

19 Ibid, Feb. 191 1. 

20 The Technical World, Feb. 191 1. 



LABOR SAVING MACHINES 137 

States Office on Public Roads, the direct annual waste caused 
by bad roads is two hundred and ninety million dollars. ^^ Add 
to this the annual loss through failure to universally use the best 
labor saving devices in road building and in keeping them in good 
condition and the total would have been enough to have paved 
and kept in repair all public highways between the oceans; and 
this could have been done without hard labor. So it will be un- 
der The Other Economics, but never under the present; for 
business now depends upon the relative scarcity of machines and 
all other things desired by the common people. 

A recent engine used in road building, may become a trac- 
tion engine by simply changing the wheels. It can haul fifteen 
tons of stone in one load, separating and distributing it over the 
road-bed with scarcely any hand labor. It can haul the roller, 
and when used as a stationary engine can drive the stone 
crusher.22 Most readers have seen the modern street-paving 
machines working. In drilling rock for blasting, a machine 
makes one man equal to forty men.^^ 

Under The Other Economics even the army of news-boys 
would not be permitted to waste their time selling papers. They 
would be considered too valuable. There are machines about 
the size of the receptacles seen on the streets for collecting mail 
packages, which can take the place of these boys. 

The mailometer is an automatically driven office appliance 
which seals, stamps and counts letters at the rate of ninety thou- 
sand in ten hours, and at the same time keeps an accurate account 
of your expenses for postage stamps.^* The automatic elec- 
trically driven conveyor now used in loading and unloading the 
steamships "Mauretania" and the ''Lusitania" can handle three 
thousand pieces of freight per hour, ^s Millions of roustabouts 



21 Ibid, March 191 1. 

22 Thirteenth Annual Report of the U. S- Commissioner of Labor on 

Hand and Machine Labor. 

23 The Technical World, April 1910. 

24 Popular Electricity, March 191 1. 

25 Popular Mechanics, April 191 1. 



138 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

on rivers, seas and oceans, and other millions of freight handlers 
in railway stations, stores, factories and on small competing 
farms, now being displaced by big machinery with no oppor- 
tunity for re-employment could, under The Other Economics, be 
re-employed to great advantage. 

Mail is electrically handled between the sub-postoffice and 
trains in the new Pennsylvania Railroad Station in New York. 
The electrically operated plant can receive and deliver three 
hundrd tons of mail daily and consists of ovrhead and under- 
ground belt-conveyors, chutes, slides and elevators of the plunger 
platform, and bucket types.^^ 

Government reports on Hand and Machine Labor con- 
tain astonishing revelations about machines. But the sav- 
ing of labor in the total of all operations in the best fac- 
tories is, as yet, small in the proportion to the work of some of 
the machines employed. In many of the operations cheap men, 
women and children, working by hand or with hand tools can 
keep pace with the speed desired for the factory as a whole. For 
example, we find children in glass factories working through 
long hours in the intense heat carrying newly blown bottles from 
the hot ovens to the places of cooling. Electrically operated 
conveyors could do that work. No factory now existing presents 
us an object-lesson showing Jww much human labor could be 
saved, by using in all operations the best labor-saving methods 
now known in the world. Therefore, we cannot go to the Gov- 
ernment Reports on Hand and Machine Labor as now used in 
factories and on farms to find what machines could ' ultimately 
do under The Other Economics. These reports can do nothing 
more than to furnish some of the data needed in making our 
estimates. 

In the three power plants of Pittsburgh Electric Street Rail- 
way Company we find, perhaps, one of the best examples of the 
manner in which hard labor would be performed under a saner 



26 Ibid. 



LABOR SAVING MACHINES 139 

system than the present. "The coal for the forty boilers in each 
plant is not handled by manual labor after coming from the 
mines. The coal arrives in freight cars and is dumped directly 
into the bins of the Company. A small electric dump-car, con- 
trolled by the engineer from the power house, comes down on 
a track under one of the huge hoppers and the coal is allowed 
to automatically fill the car. The engineer by a simple movement 
turns the current on the car which starts for the boiler house at 
the same time tripping the lever which shuts off the flow of coal. 
The car, when it comes over the boiler-supply hopper, is auto- 
matically dumped upon reaching its destination, and then goes 
back for another load. The coal is next forced into the furnaces 
by automatic stokers, and the ashes, shaken down by automatic 
grate rockers, fall into another car similar to the first, and are 
carried off out to the dump. In the power house of the Com- 
pany only one man is required, part of the time, to look to the 
boilers and to see that all the supply hoppers are full."27 

There is scarcely any kind of work, machines cannot do, when 
desired by the national government. At the Gatun dam and 
locks in the Panama Canal Zone is the Gatun Construction 
Plant.2^ The plant contains "an electrical generating plant, rock 
and sand unloaders, cement cranes and cement storage, auto- 
matic electrical railroad, concrete mixers, electrical industrial 
railway, concrete deposting plant, lock wall forms, and the 
Gatun dredging plant." It is operated by an electrical plant hav- 
ing six thousand horse-power. 

When the rock and sand, which go into the making of con- 
crete, are brought in barges, not a human hand is laid to the 
materials until they are placed as concrete where they are wanted 
in the constructions of the locks and dam. There are traveling 
towers, great grab-buckets, with a capacity of two cubic yards 
each, which drop down into barges, seize a mouthful of many 
tons of rock or sand and glide away across the cable to deposit 



27 Popular Electricity, Aug. 1910. 

28 Ibid, April, 191 1. 



140 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

it where it is wanted. The whole equipment of the rock and 
sand unloaders is under the management of one operator. One 
strand of a duplex cableway is capable of unloading and trans- 
porting sixty cubic yards of rock per hour, the traveling speed 
being about twenty-six feet per second. There are even auto- 
matic conveyors for carrying empty barrels to the fireheap. An 
automatic electric railroad transports concrete ingredients to the 
mixer building. The cars are emptied automatically. The whole 
plant, and the plants of which it is composed are one great 
automatic machine. 

The possible cent or two per day per capita of the popula- 
tion, which may be gathered into the hands of a few capitalists, 
by means of the Panama Canal, may justify the great national 
expenditure in that direction ; but it is nothing in comparison with 
the abundance of food, clothing and innocent luxuries that could 
be produced for all who labor ; if the powers of machinery were 
utilized for production of "goods for use" instead of "goods for 
a price". 

Only under The Other Economics, can people be treated as 
Capital. Only under The Other Economics, will people be re- 
garded of greater value than "things". 



CHAPTER V 

ELECTRIFIED FABM AND HOME 

One, who is honored by multitudes as the God who rules 
the forces of nature, invited man to escape useless drudgery by 
the use of intellect; when He said: ''Come unto Me all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." Man has 
found many ways of harnessing the laws of nature but, as yet, 
he has not found the way by which they may be of benefit to the 
^masses — they, as yet, only help the dividends of the owners who 
must keep their product scarce. 

Intellect is so sacred in the sight of God Almighty that He 
seems to have decreed that the man or nation who will not use 
it may perish, piety or numbers notwithstanding. It seems to be 
the sin against the Holy Ghost, of which it is said : "It shall not 
be forgiven". If the common people will not use their reasoning 
faculties, sufficient to see that men cannot get much by each 
struggling to give little even though they were dropped in the 
midst of Paradise; and that by the aid of big machinery, men, 
in almost any part of the earth today, could get much by strug- 
gling to give much — if they continue thus to blaspheme their god- 
like attribute of intelligence, they will destroy themselves. This 
world is admirably arranged for developing reasoning faculties 
and testing our divine abilities to do good to others than our- 
selves. If we do not develop these faculties somewhere along 
the highwa-y of existence, we do not rise above the level of the 
lower animals and are unfit companions of the God whose chief- 
est attribute is "intelligent benevolence". A divinely-endowed 
being who, by refusing to use his divine. powers, chooses to re- 
main a mere beast of burden and a drudge must be the greatest 

141 



142 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

dislionor in the Universe. God made enough of these kind of 
animals, we would think, when he fashioned the jackass. 

In a commonwealth under The Other Economics, aiming 
to give wealth and sufficient leisure to all who assist, agricul- 
ture would be specialized in sections of our country best adapted 
to the given kinds of products and where the least human labor 
would be required in producing and distributing them. Little 
competing farmers would not be permitted to struggle to pro- 
duce, with slow tools, every kind of crops on unvaried soil. Mr. 
W. H. Milner in Clinton County, New York, owns a farm, ac- 
cording to the Saturday Evening Post of June 4th, 1910, on 
which electric motors operate the vacuum pump for the milking 
machines, milking ten cows at the same time, run the separator 
and churn, operate the ice-making plant and refrigerator, and 
do the threshing and grinding of grain and the feed cutting. In 
the laundry there are motor-driven washing machines, wringers, 
centrifugal dryers, mangles, and electric flatirons. In the cot- 
tage are an electric piano, and electric heating and cooking de- 
vices including meat choppers, buffer and grinders, a motor- 
driven ice-cream freezer, and electric fans. Motors do the 
pumping for hydrant water, make sausage and prepare food for 
chickens, and do a hundred things performed elsewhere at the 
cost of slow and hard manual toil. "There are motors on the 
place ranging all the way from the tiny little fellow that grinds 
the food for the growing trout to the twenty-five horse-power 
motor which prepares feed for horses and cattle. In the main 
dairy barn a ten horse-power motor unloads and handles hay, 
a ton in less than five minutes. By night the buildings and yards 
are ablaze with electric light, and by day the buildings hum with 
busy motors doing the work of scores of hired men." On 
another "electrified farm" near the town of Minot, Maine, in 
addition to the above appliances an electrical clock feeds the 
horses their breakfast ; an annunciator, in the farm house, gives 
notice when the incubator needs attention, and when the rural 



ELECTRIFIED FARM AND HOME 143 

mail carrier visits the letter box. A portable telephone equip- 
ment enables the men in the fields to call up the farm house. 

Electricity, gasoline motors, steam power machinery are now 
beginning to displace the farmer with his hoe and to supply the 
markets. The farmer, under the present system, will soon be 
reduced to abject poverty unless he is able to equip himself with 
the modern implements. The man who thinks all farmers can 
do this, is just a plain fool. 

A palace, equal to the best now occupied by our few multi- 
millionaires, could be servantless and the wife and daughters of 
the home would not need to exert themselves physically any 
more than health and fashion now require. It is not necessary 
that a cruel fate consign many women to menial servitude in 
order that a few women may enjoy the advantages of wealth 
and leisure. No servantless palace now exists ; but if all of the 
best labor-saving methods, now known, were used under any 
single roof, domestic servants would not be needed and work 
would go along. In an electric home owned by Mr. George 
Knapp, in Paris, are many devices suggestive of this truth.^ "By 
pushing a button the owner can be served with anything he wants 
from a book to a meal in any room in the house. He can hear 
anything going on in any part of the house and see his visitors 
before they gain entrance. ''You approach the gate. You see 
a small illuminated push-button. When you push the button a 
speaking telephone asks your name. The voice welcomes you 
and the gate is closed and locked behind you. You pass through 
an illuminated garden containing flowers larger than ordinary 
because of electrical culture. When you approach the door of 
the mansion you step on a carpet and a brush cleans your shoes. 
The door opens and the host greets you." In this home are an 
electric piano, self-winding clock, an electric apparatus for puri- 
fying the air by ozone, an electric thermometer which regulates 
the heat of the room automatically, and in the kitchen are time- 



1 Popular Mechanics, July 1910; also Popular Electricity, May 1910 



144 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

switches which shut off the current from the various cooking 
utensils at the expiration of a given number of seconds. The 
heat is regulated to any degree of heat required. 

"When the host and his guests are seated at the table, the 
former touches a button and the electrically operated tray arrives 
through a trap door in the top of the table. When closed this 
trap looks like two ordinary silver covers. By pressing another 
button the tray with its dish is carried around the central portion 
of the table, the slender support traveling through a channel. 
As the dish arrives in front of each guest the host touches a 
third button which stops it while the guest is helping himself. 
The dish passes all around the table in this way, and then on 
pressing the first button it disappears through the table and 
returns to the kitchen." 

Many read of such marvelous inventions and think, that, be- 
cause they are invented, they will soon be within the possession 
of all. Perhaps such readers have been struggling for a lifetime 
to get a common-place, little, four-room cottage that they could 
call ''home"; and failed even to get that! Our present system 
tends to develop dreamers ; for the most of us can never have the 
good things of life, under it, except in an occasional delusion or 
dream. They could not be "scarce" and everybody "have them" 
at the same time. Yet, they must be scarce in order to command 
that holy-of-all-holies in the commercial world — prices. 

Electric kitchens could be located, if so desired, at con- 
venient centers from which meals could be sent, like U. S. mail 
in New York City, through pneumatic tubes, in hot-boxes, to 
private homes. The above-described home could be duplicated 
for an entire city which could be fed from one central kitchen. 
The inventions are all here and need but to be assembled and 
multiplied. The reader has possibly seen many of them: electric 
toasters, coffee percolators, egg beaters, cake stirrers, grinders, 
graters, parers of every kind, cherry stoners, raisin seeders, 
vegetable slicers, meat choppers, fruit presses, and self-dumping 
oyster cookers; stoves and ovens which automatically regulate 



ELECTRIFIED FARM AND HOME 145 

the degree of heat and open their doors at a certain time ; auto- 
matic conveyors, can openers, buffers for cleaning silver, polish- 
ing wheels, automatic bottle washers, electric dough mixers, 
candy makers, roasters, cereal cookers, and chafing dishes. It is 
difficult to imagine any labor-saving device for the kitchen or 
laundry which does not already exist somewhere in the civilized 
world. We are now "looking backward", a-la-Belamy, but we 
see the products of these wonderful inventions carefully guarded 
from the vast majority by a grasping economic system. The 
majority have developed a most ravenous appetite for these good 
things of life ; but must content themselves with "smacking their 
lips." 

All the above devices could be enlarged, under The Other 
Economics, for larger work. The automatic tgg boiler used on 
the steamships Lusitania and the Mauritania is able to cook two 
hundred eggs at once. K clock arrangement causes the wire 
basket containing the eggs to rise out of the water at any half- 
minute up to six minutes. Wholesale dealers are already using 
a device which tests the quality of eggs, without handling them 
singly. 

Dishwashing in this central kitchen would be done, under 
a sane system, by recently invented machines which enable two 
persons to wash 18,000 dishes per hour without touching the 
dishes. Popular Mechanics for 1911 contains a description of 
such a machine now in use in one of the large hotels in Chicago. 

The dough mixer and kneeding machine, now in use in some 
great bakeries, handles six barrels of flour at a time. Auto- 
matic devices make the bread, place it into ovens, regulate the 
heat and take out the loaves at the expiration of a given time. 
Under The Other Economics, bread would not be largely com- 
posed of air and dangerous chemical ingredients as some bakers' 
loaves are now ; for the business would not be managed for the 
purpose of obtaining profits and wages. 

Let the central kitchen be named Culinary College, and let 
it be a department of the public school or university ; for malnu- 



146 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

trition has done as much harm to mankind as ignorance of 
astronomy. Cooking, as a science and art, has never been well 
developed, because poor men's wives are slaves of all work, and 
cannot give it more than a little attention ; and it has been ren- 
dered odious by the attitude of many women of wealth and 
leisure. Kitchen maids being under social ostracism on account 
of their work, naturally despise an occupation which causes them 
to be despised. Food flavors are capable of as many varieties 
or of combinations as the notes of the musical scale. The pos- 
sible development of skill in this direction is limitless ; and culi- 
-♦nary science is closely related to organic chemistry, physiology, 
and hygiene. When the Culinary College, which under a right 
system could furnish the food for a neighborhood, gets properly 
started, only a fraction of one woman's time for actual home- 
work would be required. 



CHAPTER VI 

FRODUOTiaN OF FOOD 

A machine, operated by twelve men one month, is equal to 
the labor of one man twelve months ; although one man could 
not operate the machine. (The twelve men are supposed to be 
otherwise employed during the remaining eleven months.) And, 
likewise, the labor of three hundred men working one ten-hour 
day, as far as the expenditure of labor is to be counted, is equal 
to the labor of one man working three hundred ten-hour days. 
On farms more men are employed in seedtime and harvest ; but, 
under the plan discussed in this book, these extra laborers must 
be thought of as otherwise employed during the rest of the year. 
Therefore, in the following estimates, the labor of a greater 
number of men working at a given task during a part of the 
year is regarded as equivalent to the la^bor of a smaller number 
of men working the entire year. We will now estimate approxi- 
mately the labor-time required to produce the principal food sup- 
plies for the United States if the best existing labor-saving 
methods were used in all agricultural operations. 

Let it be borne in mind that traction machines which are 
now in use enable two men to plow one hundred and twenty-five 
acres in a day, and others managed by three men can plow, har- 
row, seed and cover seventy-five acres in a day; while in some 
great grain fields in Canada one traction engine draws a com- 
bined harvester and thresher, managed by six men, cuts, threshes 
and puts into bags the grain of from one hundred to one hundred 
and twenty-five acres in a day.^ Putting the grain into bags 

iThe Technical World, Dec 1910. 

Modern Industrial Progress, Cochrane, p. 312. 

147 



148 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

for innumerable little traders would not be permitted under The 
Other Economics ; for the simple reason that there would be no 
trading and therefore no army of men wasting their time in that 
unneeded vocation and in preparing to accommodate them. Trac- 
tion drays accompanying the harvester could receive the grain 
in bulk and carry it to an elevator close at hand where the grain 
could be unloaded by suction pipes at the rate of ten thousand 
bushels per hour, or at a greater rate if desired. 

The average yield of wheat per acre in Great Britain is 
thirty-two bushels. Three men plowing, harrowing, seeding and 
covering seventy-five acres, do this part of the work, producing 
twenty-four hundred bushels in a day of ten hours. For this 
work, the equivalent of forty-five seconds of one man's time 
should be charged against one bushel of wheat. Six men cutting 
and threshing the wheat of one hundred acres in a ten-hour day 
turn out thirty-two hundred bushels. In this part of the work 
about one hiinute and eight seconds of one man's time should be 
charged against one bushel. In sections of the country devoted 
to the production of grain, side tracks from railroads would 
extend into the fields and connect with the elevators conveniently 
at hand. Allowing an average of one hour of one man's time 
for conveying two hundred bushels to the elevator, eighteen 
seconds of one man's time should be charged against each bushel 
for this kind of work. (Transportation and distribution of 
products are treated in a following chapter.) Up to this point 
the total labor time charged against a bushel of wheat is two 
minutes and eleven seconds. 

Five bushels of wheat, or enough for a barrel of flour, is 
the average amount consumed by one person in one year. At this 
rate, labor equivalent to the labor of about fifty -six hundred men 
working three hundred days should produce a sufficient supply 
of wheat for a population of ninety-two mUllions. 

A family of five members consuming annually five barrels 
of wheat flour, would not need more than one-third of this 
amount of other smaller grains. We will consider in another 



PRODUCTION OF FOOD 149 

paragraph the amount of grain consumed indirectly in the form 
of meat. The best labor-saving machines used in the produc- 
tion of wheat can be used for producing other small cereals in 
large fields in sections of the country adapted to them. The 
extra labor of flooding rice fields, during a period between seed 
time and harvest, is inconsiderable after permanent reservoirs for 
water are constructed. Under The Other Economics oats for 
horses would be little needed, for, horses, like oxen, are not the 
best devices for saving time and labor. 

Oatmeal for the table is one of the necessaries. Oats, with 
best methods, yields sixty -two bushels per acre;^ rice, eighteen 
hundred pounds per acre ; buckwheat, thirty-four bushels ; while 
barley and rye yield about the same as wheat. We may assume 
that the yield of the average of these other small grains would 
be about the same as that of wheat, and that with the best labor- 
saving methods about the same amount of labor would be re- 
quired. Only one-third of such crops being used for table sup- 
plies, labor equal to the annual labor of a.hout seventeen hundred 
men should produce these other small grains for the whole 
population of the United States. 

Indian corn must be separately considered as it requires cul- 
tivation between seed time and harvest and is more laboriously 
harvested. The work of plowing and pulverizing the soil is the 
same as for wheat. There are machines for planting corn many 
rows at a time. "In planting corn one man 'puts in' twelve to 
fifteen acres better than the man with the hoe can plant in one."^ 
Under The Other Economics this machine would be used to save 
labor wherever corn is being planted, in order that it might be 
re-employed for the best good. A dozen rows of corn could be 
cultivated at the same time and the machine be simple, in com- 
parison with the adding machine. Existing corn cultivators 
could be enlarged. There are corn picking, husking and shelling 
machines now on the market which deliver the shelled corn in 



2 The Technical World, June 1909 and Dec 1910. 

3 The World's Work, Aug. 1910. 



150 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

bulk into traction drays. The corn-shelling machine makes the 
labor of one man equal to that of ninety former men> 

Corn, under best methods in Illinois, yields one hundred 
bushels per acre.^ Plowing and harrowing at the rate estimated 
for wheat would require that labor equal to about eighteen 
seconds of one man's time should be charged against one bushel 
of corn. Planting, at the rate of twelve acres a day by one 
man, would charge thirty seconds of one man's time against each 
bushel. Corn cultivators covering a width equal to that of the 
traction plow and harrow, used in our estimate for wheat, and 
going over the field five times in a season would charge against 
each bushel of corn five times as much as for plowing and har- 
rowing, or about forty seconds of one man's time. The machine 
for plucking the ears of corn from the stalks simply rakes them 
off. This could be enlarged to cover a width equal to that of a 
traction plow and harrow and could move as rapidly over a field. 
Allowing three times the number of men for managing this ma- 
chine as for the traction plow and harrow, about twenty-four 
seconds of one man's time should be charged against one bushel 
of corn, for this part of the work. Conveying the corn to cars, 
or places of storage, would be the same as for wheat ; this makes 
another eighteen seconds to be added. 

In the total of all operations three minutes of one man's 
time should be charged against one bushel of corn when it is 
ready for grinding. Fifty bushels of Indian corn should be as 
much as the average family would consume indirectly in the 
form of meat, and in corn preparations for the table when hav- 
ing a full supply of other cereals. Therefore, at the rate of three 
minutes of one man's time, per bushel, labor, equal to the annual 
labor of about Hfteen thousand men, could produce corn for 
ninety-two million people. 

In Prussia the average yield of potatoes per acre is four 



*The 13th Annual Report U. S- Com. Labor on Hand and Machine 

Labor. 
5 John L. Mathews in Hampton's Magazine, July, 1909. 



PRODUCTION OF FOOD 151 

hundred bushels.^ With machines enabling two men to plow 
and harrow one hundred acres in a day, less than two seconds 
of one man's time would be required for this work in the produc- 
tion of a bushel of potatoes. One man with a potato-planting 
machine for sweet potatoes is made equal to ten former men."^ 
In the total of all operations in the production of sweet potatoes 
he is made equal to seven former men. In the production of 
potatoes of either kind traction machines in large fields could 
enable one man to plant, cultivate or spray a half dozen rows at 
a time — the machine passing over a space equal to an acre in 
about five minutes. Passing over it five times during a season, 
would consume twenty-five minutes or about five seconds for 
each bushel. 

"The latest machinery for harvesting potatoes not only digs 
them, but sorts them out, incidentally to the process. "^ This 
digger enlarged could dig, sort and deliver to traction drays the 
potatoes of a half dozen rows at a time. It could be operated 
by two men, and should pass over a space equal to an acre in 
about five minutes. This would add less than two seconds of 
one man's time to one bushel on account of harvesting. 

In the total of these operations, labor equal to nine seconds 
of one man's time would be required in the production of .i 
bushel of potatoes. Labor, equal to the annual labor of four 
hundred and twenty -six men, would be sufficient to produce 
twenty-five bushels of potatoes for every family ; or five bushels 
for each person, in a population of ninety-two million. 

This is a startling conclusion ; because we have not been ac- 
customed to think of producing goods for use — but for price. 
Neither have we been accustomed to think of the universal use 
of the best existing labor-saving inventions for the purpose of 
throwing potato growers out of their present employment to 
the greatest extent possible. Under The Other Economics, that 



6 Ibid. 

^The iSth Annual Report Com. Labor. 

8 The Technical World, Aug. 1910- 



152 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

would be necessary; because the displaced labor could be re- 
employed to the social and economic advantage of themselves 
and all others: for this reason labor would be displaced, to the 
greatest possible extent, in all industries. 

Figures like the above, cause no surprise and are credible 
when given in a description of what labor-saving machines are 
doing or have done in the construction of the Panama Canal ; or 
in the building or management of a battle ship ; or in any work 
needed in the interest of a few men who are getting profits by 
handling or trading consumption goods after they are produced. 

The above amount of potatoes is equal to the total amount 
of beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions, and beans desired by 
the average family. In the plan under The Other Economics 
these vegetables would be produced in great fields where power 
machinery could be used, and in sections of the country best 
adapted to them. 

The use of the machines for planting either carrots or beets, 
reduces the labor to one forty-eighth of the former time, making 
one man equal to forty-eight men working with hand tools. The 
use of the machine for planting onions reduces the labor to one- 
eighth of the former time.^ There is a machine that makes 
holes for beans, drops in the proper number and covers them. 
It can plant alternate rows of corn and beans.^^ The amount of 
human labor, if the machines were driven by their own power 
and enlarged to cover wider space, should be about the same, 
on the average, as that which we have estimated for planting 
potatoes. All kinds of small seed can be planted by machinery. 

And there are transplanting machines. "There is a plant- 
seeder machine that will pick up tender sprouts of celery, cauli- 
flour, tomatoes and so forth, carefully settle them in the earth, 
cover their roots, and give them a good drink of water to start 
them on their new life. This little machine can plant five acres 



9 Twelfth Annual Labor Report U. S- Bulletin 54. 

10 America at Work, Frazer. 



PRODUCTION OF FOOD 163 

in a single day."^^ This small machine, or any other, can be 
enlarged for doing work on a larger scale in great fields. The 
great expenditure of hand labor in thinning rows, after planting, 
could be avoided. Machines are adjusted to work which is in- 
visible without the aid of the microscope and they certainly could 
be adjusted so as to drop in the right number of turnip seed or 
beans. 

The machines which dig and sort potatoes could harvest 
these vegetables. Only a little readjustment, which any good 
mechanic could suggest, would be needed. On some large farms, 
beans are now harvested and separated from the pods by ma- 
chinery. The average expenditure of labor, under the best 
methods, in producing twenty-five bushels of the above list of 
vegetables, to be added to the twenty-five bushels of potatoes 
allowed for each family, would require less than five times as 
much labor as that expended in producing the potatoes. There- 
fore, under the plan of The Other Economics, labor, equal to the 
annual labor of two thousand one hundred and thirty men, could 
produce beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions and beans for 
the present population of the United States. 

A cow of the best breed gives eighty pounds of milk per 
day, or twenty-nine pounds of butter in seven days.^^ Presh 
milk for invalids and infants should be produced, in all sections 
of the country, as one of the common necessaries ; for in this 
estimate we are not providing for luxuries. One pound of fresh 
milk per family per day should be the average amount required 
for infants and invalids and would require the milk of about 
two hundred and thirty thousand cows. Canned, condensed milk 
would be shipped from regions where cows can be reared and 
fed with least labor. 

A mechanical cow milker enables one person to milk ten 



11 Modern Industrial Progress, Cochrane, p. 220. 

12 Technical World and Popular Electricity, 1909- 

13 Technical World, July 1910. 



164 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

cx>ws at the same time, doing the work in six minutes." Labor, 
equal to the labor of about forty-six hundred persons, could do 
this part of the work in supplying one pound of fresh milk daily 
for every American family. The milk bottling machine "picks 
up a carrier of empty bottles, straightens it up, if it happens to 
be out of line, moves it under and lifts it up under a battery of 
spouts from which the milk issues, lowers and carries it to an 
apparatus which automatically caps each bottle and discharges 
the carrier upon a car." It is operated by two men and has a 
capacity of seven thousand six hundred and eighty bottles per 
hour.i^ Labor, equal to the annual labor of about nine hundred 
and sixty men, could do this part of the work in furnishing a 
daily bottle of milk to every family in the United States. 

An automatic machine washes bottles, rinses, dries them, 
and injects a sterilizing vapor into each bottle, at the rate of one 
thousand bottles an hour. Two men operate the machine.^^ 
Labor, equal to the annual labor of eighteen hundred and forty 
persons, could wash the milk bottles for the whole population of 
the United States. In milking the best breed cows, sufficient 
to furnish two pounds of butter for every family per week in 
America, it would require labor equal to the annual labor of 
about six thousand men working ten hours a day. 

According to the Thirteenth Annual Report of the United 
States Commissioner of Labor on "Hand and Machine Labor", 
creamery butter in tubs was made by a combination churn and 
butter worker, which churned, worked, washed and salted the 
butter in one-eightieth of the time required by hand. The clean- 
ing of the establishment was done in one-seventeenth of the 
former time. In making butter one person was made equal to 
eighty former persons. In cleaning the establishment one person 
was made equal to seventeen. The total average saving of labor 
is in the ratio of about forty-eight to one. One former man. 



14 Popular Electricity, June 1909 and Feb. 1910. 

15 Popular Mechanics, July 1909. 

16 Technical World, Sept. 1910. 



PRODUCTION OF FOOD 165 

with a hand churn, could make a^bout ten pounds of butter in an 
hour. When labor is made forty-eight times more effective by 
the inventions above referred to, labor, equivalent to the annual 
labor of thirteen hundred men, could make one hundred and four 
pounds of butter annually for every five persons in the nation. 

In these days of rapid transit and refrigerator cars, under 
The Other Economics, dairy farms, cattle ranches, and meat- 
packing establishments would be located in sections of the 
country with reference to saving of labor and providing leisure. 
In our great Southwest and in the southern sections of our 
country only a small amount of hay for cattle would need to be 
cut and cured or stored. 

Yet, in the preparation of a field for producing hay, should 
such be found imperative, the traction machines such as would 
be used in preparing the ground for wheat could be used ; when 
fields are seeded they do not need to be plowed for several years. 
A machine managed by two men can mow one hundred acres in 
a day. There are tedders for stirring the cut grass which can 
be enlarged to cover a width equal to that of the mower and can 
move as rapidly. There is a tractor, managed by two men, that 
can travel five miles an hour and which hauls a wagon with hay 
rack, to which a machine is attached which rakes and loads two 
tons of hay in twelve minutes.^^ At the expiration of twelve 
minutes the raker and loader is detached and attached to another 
tractor and wagon, while the former hastens away to the 
hay stack or barn with the load. The unloading and storing of 
the two tons can be finished in ten minutes.^^ with these ma- 
chines used in production of hay, if once plowing and seeding 
the field is sufficient for three years, and if the yield is two tons 
per acre, labor equivalent to the labor of less than five thousand 
men working ten hours a day through the year would be sufficient 
to produce and care for as many tons of hay as there are families 



17 Ibid, Dec. 1910. 

18 Ibid and Saturday Evening Post, June 4, 1910. 



166 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

in the United States. This should be sufficient when horses are 
not counted among the necessaries, and when all cattle, except 
cows needed to supply fresh milk for infants and invalids, are 
kept where they need no hay but can graze most of the winter. 

Under The Other Economics the "cow-boy's" occupation 
would return, but he could be a gentleman of wealth and leisure 
while doing many times the amount of work previously done by 
a man of his calling. There would be no branding, no roundups, 
no hardships. To prepare the great cattle ranges for a nation, 
would be a work for the economic advantage of the whole people 
compared with which our big Canal is insignificant; although 
the ranch would cost almost nothing. Pipes or ditches could 
assist nature in the distribution of water supplies. The cattle 
would take care of themselves. Labor, equal to the annual labor 
of one man, should be enough to take care of ten thousand of 
them — ^including driving them to the place of fattening, which 
would be within the cattle ranges where the meat-packing houses 
should also be located. If two of the cattle were eaten by the 
average family, less than four thousand cow-boys would be suf- 
ficient for the entire United States. The rearing of meat cattle 
in the northern states, feeding and sheltering them through the 
long winter period, is a vast waste of labor. The labor thus 
wasted by fragments, if saved and re-employed to the best ad- 
vantage, would not only supply sufficient meat to all families who 
now do not have enough nourishments, but would build for them 
commodious homes, which when built would last a thousand 
years. 

The "factory plan" should be used in fattening cattle. The 
following description of it is given by D. A. Wells in his valuable 
book, "Recent Economic Changes." "Ten thousand cattle are 
fattened under one roof. One laborer takes care of two hun- 
dred of them with less labor and is occupied only a portion of 
his time, with less trouble than a farmer can take care of fifteen 
or twenty of them on his farm." The cattle are fed, the barn 



PRODUCTION OF FOOD 157 

is cleansed, and all their needs attended to by nearly automatic 
devices. A farmer fattening fifteen or twenty cattle on his farm 
does not devote more than two hours a day to the work and they 
can be fattened in two months. By the factory plan a part of 
one man's time is sufficient for the fattening of twelve hundred 
cattle in a year. At this rate, labor equal to the annual labor of 
eight thousand men, would be more than enough to fatten two 
steers annually for every family in the United States. 

As heretofore cited, in the Chicago packing houses one 
man cuts throats at the rate of one in three seconds, and within 
about fifteen minutes after the animal is seized by the hind legs, 
it is dressed meat in the cooling rooms.^^ One hundred and 
fifty men have a part to perform in this process; each, on the 
average, doing his work in six seconds. At this rate, labor equal 
to the annual labor of about sixty-four hundred men, would be 
sufficient to butcher two steers for every five persons in the 
United States. This is a full ration of meat. Less beef is 
used in proportion as other meat is substituted. 

An electrified poultry farm conducted according to the 
"village plan" would require very little human labor. The little 
houses on wheels, or runners, being of different shapes and col- 
ors, each brood would attend to themselves. A supply of feed- 
bins with valves, automatic conveyors, and hydrant water would 
enable one man to take care of thousands of them simply by 
throwing a switch. On Long Island there is a poultry estab- 
lishment which has an incubator capable of hatching twenty 
thousand chickens at the same time. Such an establishment if 
electrically equipped and operated would not require human 
labor at all. The heat of the incubator would be adjusted auto- 
matically. The newly hatched chickens could go out into a 
series of brooders and run ways. In modern chicken yards the 
chickens, with their beak, turn devices that scatter whatever 
kind of food the chickens prefer. Under the Other Economics, 

18 Progress and Invention, Byrn. 
America at Work, Frazer. 



158 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

giving all families as many eggs as they could use, would be a 
national enterprise; compared with which the achievements 
of our present-day Congress and Parliament would seem 
infantile. 

Men, competing for profits and trying to drive each other 
out of business, seek many new inventions, and the electric 
chicken picker is one of them. It is now used by some whole- 
sale poultry dealers. The fowls are conveyed into a receptacle 
in which powerful blasts of air take off the feathers and down 
in a few seconds.^o Why would it be a misfortune if all chick- 
ens were picked in this way? From these machines, the fowls 
being denuded of feathers and down, could be automatically de- 
livered to other machines, which would automatically open, 
clean and deliver them into cold storage. The "Iron Chink" 
could be adjusted to do this work.^i This machine has been in- 
troduced into the salmon canning factories on the Pacific coast 
because the salmon season is short and the expert Chinamen, 
who did nothing but wield the knife, were too slow for the work 
to be done. 

Two generations ago a half hour a day of one person's time 
was quite adequate to provide poultry and eggs for one aver- 
age family, in primitive fashion, and as much more were sold. 
With the best labor-saving devices now possible, labor, in the 
production of eggs and poultry, would be at least twenty-five 
time more productive. If so, labor, equal to the annual labor 
of about foit'T thousand persons, oould provide eggs and poultry 
for the whole population of our country. 

In the production of sugar a vast amount of work could 
be saved in growing and harvesting sugar cane. Under The 
Other Economics, the multitudes toiling in the cane fields with 
wastefully slow tools, for a bare existence, could be displaced, 
to a great extent, and re-employed in other ways to an economic 
advantage to all; for a machine has recently been invented 



20 Popular Electricity, 1909- 
aiThe Technical World, 1909. 



PRODUCTION OF FOOD 159 

which harvests cane.^^ j^ cuts, tops and gathers the cane and 
dumps it into wagons. One machine will harvest and prepare 
for the presses ten acres of cane weighing two hundred tons, 
at a cost of about seven dollars and -fifty cents, including wages. 
If the average wage of the men who manage the machine were 
a dollar a day, seven men would do this part of the work in the 
production of thirty-two thousand pounds of sugar in a day, for 
one ton of cane yields one hundred and sixty pounds of sugar .^"^ 
At this rate, labor equal to the annual labor of about twenty-six 
hundred men, could do this part of the work in supplying two 
hundred pounds of sugar per year to every family in the United 
States, 

Plowing, harrowing, planting and cultivating for sugar cane 
would be about the same as for corn. Machinery can be used 
for planting sugar cane and from ten to twenty-five crops may 
be obtained from one planting. Disc cultivators reaching down 
from an elevated axle could cultivate a half-dozen rows at a 
time in great fields prepared for machine cultivation. The work 
preceding harvest would be about the same as in our former 
estimate for corn. This work, on the number of acres required 
for the production of two hundred pounds of sugar for every 
family in our land, would require labor equal to that of about 
one thousand men working through the year. 

In 1909, the sugar refining establishments in our country 
turned out more than twenty thousand dollars worth of prod- 
uct per wage earner. Adding one-thirteenth to the number of 
wage earners, for superintendents, and estimating the product at 
five cents per pound, wholesale, fourteen thousand and five hun- 
dred men should refine about two hundred and fifty pounds of 
sugar anuually for every family of our land. 

Reviewing the estimates contained in this chapter we find 
that labor, equal to less than one hundred thousand men, -working 
through the year and using the best labor-saving methods in 



22 Popular Mechanics, March 191 1. 

28 The Story of Sugar, Geo. Thomas Surface. 



160 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

existence at every possible point, could produce the principal 
food supplies for the present population of the United States. 

Probably more than this number of work-people are in 
prison on account of offenses against private property, caused 
by their inability to buy, with their wages, that standard of liv- 
ing taught in home, school, church and forum: decent shelter, 
clothing, amusement and sufficient food for themselves and 
those loved ones who were dependent on their labor. 

It appears to us, that, under The Other Economics, they 
might be out of prison ; and that labor, equal to what they now 
waste in idleness, could produce and distribute all the principal 
food supplies of the nation. 



CHAPTER VII 
PRODxrcTiozr or oLOTsiira 

With the best selection of seeds and treatment of soil, the 
yield of cotton is two and one-half bales per acre. A bale of 
cotton weighs five hundred pounds. Three-fourths of a pound 
of cotton is used in making a yard of cloth of the average thick- 
ness. With machines which enable three men to plow, harrow 
a;nd seed seventy-five acres in a day, labor, equal to that of three 
hundred men working three hundred days, could do this work 
on the number of acres sufficient to provide forty yards of cloth 
for every person in the United States, including children and 
infants. Machines which plant corn could be adjusted to plant- 
ing cotton. With cultivators which enable one man to culti- 
vate four rows at a time, the labor of cultivating would be 
about four times as much as would be required in putting in the 
crop. 

A machine that picks cotton successfully has recently been 
invented.^ It enables one man to pick, in a da^y, as mucli as 
thirty persons by hand. The axle of the machine is high 
enough to pass over the stalks without breaking them. 
The interlocking flexible fingers of steel pick the cotton from 
the open bolls and creep beneath the branches, picking those 
that are hidden. It does not disturb the bolls that are unripe. 
This ootton-picking appliance can be detached and stored; and 
the thirty horse-power tractor used for running the cotton gin, 
or, for other work. This mechanical cotton-picker, managed by 
one man, picking five acres in a day, would, of course, have to 
work during a time equal to fourteen hundred and seventy-two 



iThe Technical World, Feb. 191 1 ; also The World's Work, Nov. 1910. 

161 



162 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

years to pick enough cotton to give forty yards of cloth to the 
various inhabitants of our country ; this, however, is only equiv- 
alent to fourteen hundred and seventy-two men working three 
hundred days. At present tens of thousands are employed in 
this vocation.* 

Before the invention of the cotton gin in 1794, it required 
the labor of one person ten hours to separate the seeds from 
one pound of cotton. Now the improved gin can do the work 
of fifteen hundred persons. Allowing two men to manage a 
gin, ginning the above amount of cotton for the nation would 
require labor equal to the annual labor of seventy-three hun- 
dred men. And enlarging the gin could reduce this number. 

Before the invention of the spinning- jenny, the single 
thread on the spindle of the spinning wheel occupied the atten- 
tion of one person. One person now, with less labor, attends to 
a hundred spindles, each making twenty thousand revolutions 
per minute. Before the introduction of the power loom, 
the shuttle was thrown by hand. Now the shuttle flies at the 
rate of from one hundred and eighty to two hundred and fifty 
strokes per minute, and one weaver can manage twenty power 
looms, each equal to twenty hand looms.^ The old-time bleach- 
ing process, by the agency of the sun, consumed from six to 
eight months. Now, by a chemical process, bleaching is done 
quickly and in bulk. The fact that industrious common wage 
earners are not more warmly and abundantly clothed than for- 
merly, should be a demonstration, that, whatever may be the 
progress of invention, even common necessaries must continue 
to be scarce and hard to obtain for the multitude as long as 
the present economic system endures. 



* There is little probability that the cotton will be picked by machinery 
to any great degree, owing to the fact, that, cotton growers seldom own 
the land and would have no incentive to displace themselves. Negro 
children and poor whites are now cheaper than the machinery. Never- 
theless the thoughtful reader will see at once the economic waste in the 
mal-occupation of an unnecessary number of work people — [W. H. T.]- 

2 America at Work, Frazer, p. 251. 



PRODUCTION OF CLOTHING 163 

The Fall River factories, with thirty thousand operatives, 
can turn out twenty-eight thousand four hundred and twenty- 
three yards of cloth for each operative.^ At this rate about one 
hundred and fifty-eight thousand operatives could turn out 
annually forty yards of cotton cloth for each person, or two 
hundred yards for each family in the United States. And by 
further invention and scientific methods still fewer operatives 
would be required. 

Machinery can now be used, in the production of linen 
goods, in all operations from plowing of the field to the finished 
garment.* The new process is now used in Oxford Linen Mills 
at Gardner, Massachusetts. The straw in the fields does not 
need to be pulled by hand, as formerly, and it is not necessary 
to sacrifice either the seed or the straw. The straw is delivered 
to nearly automatic machines, which do all the work of prepar- 
ing the flax for spinning and weaving, including the bleaching, 
which previously required months. Flax can be grown in all 
climates where agriculture is possible. Under The Other Eco- 
nomics, the common people would perhaps change back from 
cotton and shoddy, to linen and woolen ; and they would have all 
the clothes they could use at less labor. These could easily be 
made so abundant that no one would desire to steal them. 
They would be without price because there would be enough 
for all. And, if we dared indulge in prophecy, for a moment, 
we would declare that one who would not do his part in serving 
the new order of business when that plan had demonstrated 
its power to produce ''plenty," would be sent to a reformatory 
institution which would give him an experience of the life of a 
low wage earner in one of the sweatshops of former days. 

Shearing sheep is now performed on some ranches by an 
electrically operated sheep-shearing machine. In a Republic un- 
der The Other Economics, sheep would be reared in great ranges 
where they could take care of themselves in winter as well as 



3 Ibid. 

4F. N. Bausket in Van Norden Magazine, 1909. 



164 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

summer. They would require but little attention in sheep 
ranches properly prepared for them in right localities. A scien- 
tific arrangement would not permit sheep and cattle to be kept 
on ground adapted to the plow. The labor wasted in fencing 
patches of land and in making the fence to surround little 
private gardens and fields today, would, if saved and used to the 
best advantage, clothe our nation. Exterminating wolves, drain- 
ing bogs and preparing great ranches would cost less than our 
present war preparations and would certainly mean more to the 
comfort and luxuries of the race. Under best conditions the 
human labor represented by a yard of average woolen cloth 
would be about the same as that represented by an average yard 
of cotton, and less than half as many yards are used. 

One woman sewing by hand, in former days, when the 
average inhabitant was as comfortably clothed as he is now, 
could make nine shirts in six days. If she had been paid as 
little for making a shirt, as is now paid to sewing women in 
London, her wage would have been less than two cents a day. 
iWhen the sewing machine was invented in 1846, a woman, 
thus assisted, was able to make ten times as many stitches in 
a day. The modern factory sewing machine has raised the 
speed of the sewing machine from a few hundred to four thou- 
sand stitches per minute.^ In ready-made clothing factories, 
hundreds of suits are cut from the same pattern, and cloth-cut- 
ting machines cut through several inches of cloth at once. Two 
persons and the machine can do the work of five hundred per- 
sons cutting cloth with hand shears. In Chicago all cheap tail- 
oring is done by work-people, who receive as low as two cents 
for doing all the sewing on a pair of trousers. By working 
hard, one woman can sew sixteen pairs in a day and earn thirty- 
two cents.^ Her daily Vv^age, we would think, could scarcely 
buy one good meal at a restaurant ; not to mention other meals, 
clothing, shelter, sickness and periods of unemploym;ent. Less 

5 Progress of Invention, Byrn, p. 193. 
. 6 America at Work, Frazer, p. 144. 



PRODUCTION OF CLOTHING 165 

than thirty thousand men, each making sixteen pairs of trous- 
ers in a day, could make three pairs per year for the male popu- 
lation of the United States. Five times this amount of labor 
should be sufficient for making all garments for the male popu- 
lation; and the sewing for women would be about the same as 
for the men, considering the average of them as they are now 
clothed. Therefore, about three hundred thousand persons with 
best machinery could make garments, including underwear, for 
our population. There is no way of ascertaining how many 
million men and women are now employed at this kind of work 
more or less of their time. In the production of hosiery the 
saving of time in favor of the machine, as compared with hand 
labor, is in the ratio of about one hundred and fifty-five to one."^ 
The average pair of stockings (for men and women, children 
and infants) would require, in the making by hand, about one 
person's time for a whole day. Fifteen thousand women whose 
labor is made one hundred and fifty-five times more effective by 
machinery, could do this work for the population of the nation 
and give each person seven pairs of stocking per year. 

Prior to 1861, when the average inhabitant was as well 
supplied with shoes as he is now, and ''bread lines" were never 
heard of, shoemaking was confined to slow hand methods. The 
McKay sewing machine, invented during that year, enabled 
one operative to sew nine hundred pairs of shoes in ten hours. 
The Goodyear felt machine introduced some further improve- 
ments.^ A girl and a machine can fasten buttons on shoes at 
the rate of about nine thousand buttons in a day. Another girl 
can make holes and clamp in eyelets for about one thousand 
shoes in a day. A hundred years ago, from twelve to fifteen 
months were required to tan hides ; now, skins are changed into 
leather in a few hours. Great numbers of skins being tanned 
at the same time; the labor time for this work that should be 
charged against one pair of shoes is inconsiderable. 



7 13th Annual Report U- S- Com. Vol i, on Hand and Machine Labor. 

8 Progress of Invention, Byrn, p. 190. 



166 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

A test was made in a New England shoe factory, and the 
time of making a pair of men's shoes was only seventeen min- 
utes.^ Many operatives and machines were engaged in the 
work, but labor time equal to seventeen minutes of one man's 
time was all that could be charged against one pair of shoes. 
And even this time can be shortened. 

Each person, on the average, wears out two and a half 
pairs of shoes in a year. Allowing labor, equivalent to seven- 
teen minutes of one person's time for making one pair of shoes, 
labor, equal to the annual labor of about twenty-two thousand 
persons, could make shoes of ordinary grade for a population 
of ninety-two million. The reader will see that there is very 
little guess-work about these figures. To appreciate the waste of 
labor it is only necessary to remember that in 1905, there were 
160,294 persons statistically recorded as engaged in the making 
of boots and shoes throughout the country, in big shops and 
little ones. A saving of over 700 per cent, of labor time could 
be made in this industry alone by The Other Economic system. 
Our nation cannot be profligate of "labor time" without loss of 
comforts and luxuries to her people. 

In establishments making millinery and lace goods in 1909, 
the product, per wage earner, was valued at twenty-one hundred 
and eighty-nine dollars. For wool hats, at factory prices, the 
value of the product was a little more than nineteen hundred 
dollars per wage earner. If the prices are doubled before this 
class of goods reach the consumer, about one hundred and 
ninety thousand work-people could annually manufacture ten 
dollars worth of millinery and lace for every woman, and six 
dollars worth of hats for every man in our country. This in- 
cludes children and infants. We are considering only the pres- 
ent standard of living now attained by the average family, in- 
cluding farmers and common wage earners who are the great 
majority of the population. 

In the above industries there is less concentration of capi- 

9 America at Work, Fraser. 



PRODUCTION OF CLOTHING 167 

tal, less saving of labor, than in the best factories ; and in the 
best factories more than half of the labor now expended would 
be saved, if millionaires were required to, either provide extra 
machinery, or, do the work themselves. The most effective labor- 
saving methods would be used in all operations in all industries 
under The Other Economics. Much less than half of the 
above number of laborers would be needed to make the pres- 
ent supply of hats, millinery and lace goods for our nation. 

After reviewing the preceding estimates we see that, ap- 
proximately, five hundred thousand persons could provide the 
principal articles of common clothing for the whole population 
of the United States, if business were organized and conducted 
under the rules of The Othier Economics. The necessary labor- 
saving devices exist and are in use in some places. Under The 
Other Economics "people" would be capital. No cheap boy, or 
girl, or adult would be cast into the savage smelter of com- 
mercialism in order to refine a "few cents profit per yard" of 
cloth for a few fortunate lords. The best known labor-saving 
machines and methods would be introduced into all operations 
in all industries to save and improve people. All displaced 
labor would be re-employed in providing usable wealth and suffi- 
cient leisure for all who serve the common good. 

Adding to this estimate, the number estimated in the pre- 
ceding chapter for producing food, we see that, approximately, 
six hundred thousand work-people, or less than half the number 
out of employment and seeking work in our country, could, 
under The Other Economics, produce comfortable clothing and 
wholesome food for the entire population of the United States. 



CHAPTER VIII 

For most operations in all kinds of mining, power ma- 
chines can be used. In preparation for blasting the Walker 
drill, worked by compressed air, drills three feet into hard rock 
in fifty-five seconds.^ Sharpening the bits of rock drills, in 
some mines, is done automatically. They are heated, sharp- 
ened, upset, fluted and brought back to the exact size and diam- 
eter by machines, passing from one to another mechanically .^ 
There is a machine for tunneling through rock that makes a 
tube eight feet in diameter, and the pulverized rock is removed 
without hand labor. 

Anything that electric motors can do above ground, they 
can do under ground, in the same space. There could be auto- 
matic self-dumping cars, automatic elevators, electric power 
shovels, and automatic conveyors, adjusted to the work re- 
quired in mines and quarries. 

The Ridley and Jones coal cutting machine is a small af- 
fair, only about two feet high and three feet long, and can un- 
dercut a seam of coal four hundred and fifty feet in length, to 
ja depth of three feet, in eight hours.^ There are other varie- 
ties of coal cutting machines. You go into a "room" in a coal 
mine where one of these machines is used, and you see two 
men, or a man and a boy, managing the machine while it does 
all the hard work. They put the face- of the machine against the 
lower part of the coal and pull the lever. "Immediately there 



1 13th Annual Report of U. S. Com. of Labor on Hand and Machine 
Labor, Vol i- 

2 Popular Mechanics, Sept. 1910. 

3 Labor Saving Machines, Samuelson. 



1©8 



MINING 169 

whizzes a chain with a hundred teeth that can cut through coal 
at the rate of six feet in two minutes." Two men and this ma- 
chine can mine ninety tons in a day. 

Miners naturally object to the introduction of these ma- 
chines. With slow tools, they cannot find employment now, all 
the year, but can mine more coal in seven or eight months than 
the operators can sell. They do not want work taken away 
from them, but ''made" for them ; and would be happier if they 
were furnished with tools which were even slower than those 
which they now use. They and their families can barely live 
when they are getting wages. The periods of unemployment 
cause their distress to be greater than the comfortable class can 
imagine. They know that although machinery may increase 
the productivity of labor a hundred fold, it cannot, under the 
present economic conditions, increase the income of the lower 
multitude to which they belong. 

Even the boys whose health and mentality are sacrificed at 
the picking belts in the anthracite coal regions, could be, and in 
some instances are, thrown out of their jobs contrary to the de- 
sires of their toiling but poverty-stricken parents, by machines 
named coal- jigs, which take out the slate and other impurities, 
at the same time grading and washing the coal.* 

Under The Other Economics, little coal would be used, in 
comparison with the amount now consumed. Homes, farms, 
factories and railroads would be provided with electricity, de- 
veloped without the aid of coal, furnishing light, heat and pow- 
er. That which is already accomplished in this direction is 
enough to show what could be done universally, so far as the 
bounties of nature and the present inventions are concerned. 
A rapid and universal change from steam to hydro-electric 
power — even if it should not be permitted to cause an increase 
in the per capita amount of consumption of goods and the dis- 
aster of so-called overproduction — would be impossible under 



* Industrial Progress, Cochrane, p. 325. 
America at Work, Frazer. 



170 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

the present economic system. Many of the present manufac- 
turing centers could not compete against the new ones spring- 
ing up nearer to places where sufficient water power might be 
developed. But, under The Other Economics, the welfare of 
the common people of the nation would not be sacrificed in the 
interests of the money values of real estate, even in such great 
cities as Chicago and New York. As business is adjusted at 
present, the majority must be held in various degrees of pov- 
erty regardless of the vast possibilities of inventions and new 
methods. 

About fifty million tons of coal were turned into coke in 
our country in 1909, and coke would still be needed in the new 
age. About fifty-six thousand wage earners were employed in 
mining this amount of coal; mining machines would make the 
labor of one man equal to that of nine former men.^ With the 
best labor-saving methods now possible, seven thousand men 
could mine this amount of coal by working through the year. 
Twenty-nine thousand men were employed in making coke. 
Coke is drawn out of ovens by men using heavy iron scrapers, 
who then load it onto cars. The men are cheap and the work 
is slavish. In properly constructed ovens, a machine thrusts 
a ram into the oven on one side and forces it out, through an 
opening on the other side, into cars. Three-fourths of the labor 
in making coke could be saved by labor-saving devices now ex- 
isting, if the owners of the business were required to either 
introduce the devices or do the work themselves. 

In 1909, the number of wage earners in the United States 
employed in metallic mining, drilling for oil, mining structural, 
abrasive, chemical and other materials, was about one million 
and sixty-five thousand. This includes all who were working 
in mines and quarries, most of which were equipped with poor 
tools being used in small enterprises. We may safely assume 
that one-fourth of this number of men, or 266,320, could turn 



5 13th Annual Report U. S. Com. of Labor on Hand and Machine 
Labor. 



MINING 171 

out an equal amount of product, if the best labor-saving ma- 
chines and methods now known were used in all operations. 

According to the estimates in this chapter, and the two pre- 
ceding it, under The Other Economics, the annual labor of 
about eight hundred and eighty thousand work-people, would be 
able to produce the principal food supplies and principal articles 
of clothing and that part of the present supply of mine prod- 
ucts which would still be needed, for the whole population of 
the United States. This is still less than half the number of 
industrious and law-abiding work-people in our country who, 
on the average, are out of employment and begging for work. 



CHAPTER IX 

TBANSFOBTATION Aim DISTRXBTTTION 

Nearly all hard work by low wage earners employed in 
railway transportation, could be avoided, and the number of 
employees greatly reduced, by the general use of labor-saving 
devices now existing. Traveling cranes can lift and carry a 
burden of any weight from a few pounds up to seventy tons.^ 
Electrically operated automatic conveyors exist and could be 
used in freight houses. Box cars having roofs that can be lifted 
off and returned by electric cranes are now used on the Tehaun- 
tepec Railway in Mexico, which hopes to compete with the 
Panama Canal.^ 

Cars can be loaded and unloaded by machinery. There 
are portable elevators that can incline to any angle and can be 
used in all freight houses and wherever goods are stored.^ With 
a portable elevator, sixteen hundred packages, each weighing 
one hundred and forty pounds, have been piled in tiers in place 
of storage in two hours. Into cars having removable roofs, 
packages in crates of two tons each could be loaded or unloaded 
with electric cranes. One man managing the crane does the 
work of gangs of men. Five or six such cranes can load a 
thousand-ton barge in a night.* 

Most of the roustabouts on our docks and the freight- 
handlers on our railroads could be thrown out of employment 
by the use of electric cranes and automatic conveyors. Under 
The Other Economics, which takes care of displaced labor, all 



1 Labor Saving Machines, Samuelson, p. 26. 

2 The Technical World, June 1910. 
s Popular Mechanics, Feb. 1911. 
*The Technical World, April 1910. 

172 



TRANSPORTATION AND DISTRIBUTION 173 

men in all industries would be thrown out of slavish jobs as 
fast as possible, in order that they might be re-employed in 
making and using other instruments of production to increase 
to the utmost the total amount of wealth and leisure for all who 
serve the common good. Under a scientific system of distribu- 
tion, adjusted to the public good, requiring no accounting except 
the estimate of the amount of goods needed and the goods on 
hand, an army of bookkeepers, clerks, policemen, etc., could be 
displaced and re-employed in further reducing the work of pro- 
duction. (See Chapter XI, Part II.) 

Automatic car lines are already in successful operation and 
are adapted to the transportation of goods over relatively short 
distances. They do not need to be accompanied by a motor- 
man and can travel at any desired speed up to fifty miles an 
hour.^ At one of the coal mines at Blossburgh, Pa., a train of 
two motor cars and four trailers carried sixteen thousand 
pounds of coal at a trip, automatically dumping the coal and 
returning empty to the loading chute at the mine. This system 
of automatic transportation can be adapted "to serve rural com- 
munities by carrying mail and packages, and to use concrete 
tube systerns for transportation under ground in congested cen- 
ters of population, and for moving freight in railway terminals. 
It is in the automatic package delivery that the most interest- 
ing features are exhibited. It is intended to send these little 
cars out over a system something after the manner of a cash 
carrier in a department store, only the cars are self-propelled 
by little motors and will travel up hill and down dale. In de- 
livering mail it is planned to direct these cars from a central 
station operator. The car will slow down automatically, leave 
a mail box containing a farmer's mail, locked in a box in front 
of the house, pick up a box containing outgoing mail, ring a 
bell in the house, and proceed on its way to the next station. 



5 Popular Mechanics, Sept. 1910. 

6 Automatic Transportation in Popular Electricity, Oct. 1908 and 

Feb. 191 1. 



174 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

going at the rate of twenty to thirty miles an hour. The same 
method would be employed in delivering and collecting pack- 
ages of merchandise." 

One has only to imagine these existing labor-saving de- 
vices universally introduced, to readily see that the amount of 
labor displaced by them would be sufficient to make a great mar- 
gin of displaced laborers, to be re-employed in producing a 
higher standard of living. So it would be under The Other 
Economics, but this can only remain a "fond hope" for the ma- 
jority under the present system. 

An electrical automatic device to* take the place of flagmen 
at railroad crossings has been tested and is practicable.'^ The 
approach of the car causes a gong on a pole to give forth warn- 
ing sounds and exhibits the words "Look out" ; it also gives - 
the customary signals at night. At Union Terminus in Bos- 
ton, it formerly required fifty-one men to attend to switches 
and signals; now, by the aid of electricity, seven men do the 
work. 

In restaurants, on railroads and elsewhere, waiters are no 
longer necessary. A mechanical waiter service for restaurants 
has been tested and is successful.^ "The patron seats himself 
at the table, indicates his choice of dishes by punching a ticket, 
which, together with cash to cover his order, he places in a 
money box and drops through an opening in the table. The 
box is carried to the kitchen by means of a conveyor, the order 
is filled and placed on a tray, and automatically delivered to the 
table designated by the number on the order box. When the 
patron has finished he places the soiled dishes on the tray and 
starts it back to the kitchen." 

A machine for oiling trucks of cars, used on the Santa Fe 
Railway at Los Angeles, enables two men to do, without labor, 
in five minutes, the work which formerly required the labor of 

7 The Scientific American, Nov. 12, 1910, and Popular Electricity, 

Oct., 1910. 

8 Popular Mechanics, Dec. 1910- 



TRANSPORTATION AND DISTRIBUTION 175 

two for a half hour.^ In cleansing railway coaches a vacuum 
cleaning outfit, mounted on trucks, so that it can be moved from 
one car to another, is used in some places. 

About thirteen hundred miles of railroads have already- 
substituted electricity for coal. "Electrification is bound to 
come; that is the well considered opinion of the president of 
one of the great railroad systems of our country, a man, who, in 
a statesmanlike way, has led the railroad development of our 
times. "^^ Hydro-electric power, awaiting development in our 
country, is sufficient to electrify all our railroads and all our 
industries. The electric devices for saving labor, already ex- 
isting, if applied in all work on railroads, would be sufficient 
to displace nearly all hand toil, and one man could do the work 
of many men. The labor that could be saved by the substitu- 
tion of electricity for coal would, in a few years, be equal to 
the work of making the change. Then, by the plan sug- 
gested under The Other Economics, the labor thus saved would 
be re-employed, as in other cases, in multiplying the comforts 
and luxuries for all who are working under that system. 

When crossing the ocean have you looked down into the 
inferno where half naked, sooty and scorched men are shovel- 
ing coal into the furnaces under the boilers? Did it occur 
to you that all such savage barbarity and torture was absolutely 
unnecessary? It is now possible for mechanical stokers to do 
that slavish work while the human stoker, decently clothed and 
sitting in a pleasant room, could manage the mechanical stoker 
and, at the same time, do a great variety of other work, without 
hard labor. By manipulating electrical switches he could attend 
to the mechanical stoker, help to scrub decks, serve tables, polish 
shoes, or do anything that electric buttons and appliances are 
now doing somewhere. Mechanical stokers are now in use on 
some steamships and on some railway trains. 

9 The Technical World, March 1911. 

10 The Railway Problem of Tomorrow, L. Bullard in Technical World, 

March 191 1. 



176 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

Petroleum, which is used on some steamships, should be 
used on all of them; for the human labor of mining petroleum 
is small in comparison with that required for coal, and a vast 
amount of toil is saved by using it for fuel. Scientists predict 
that ships will one day be propelled by electric power developed 
from the sun's rays, or from the movements of the waves of the 
sea. But we are not dreaming of future inventions : we are con- 
sidering only present possibilities with the applied sdence already 
known and tested. 

A few steamships, carrying as much as thirty thousand tons 
of freight, are loaded and unloaded by managing levers and 
electric buttons which control electric or steam power grab- 
buckets, cranes, endless belts, pneumatic suction devices and 
gravitation, which do the work. There are floating cranes 
adapted for use on rivers that can lift and carry one hundred 
and forty tons at a time.^^ At Madgeburgh, Germany, we may 
see huge cranes driven by electric power, swinging their great 
arms out over boats that open at the top, and lifting out goods 
into the upper stories of warehouses. 

These labor-saving devices, at present, enable Christian 
capitalists to sell goods to heathens at a price low enough to 
drive heathen capitalists out of business, and at the same time 
get a profit for themselves. This compels heathen wage earn- 
ers, driven by hunger and nakedness, to beg for work at lower 
wages, which tends to further reduce wages in Christian coun- 
tries. We are not surprised that those who advocate "mini- 
mum wage" and 'low tariff" at the same time, are now won- 
dering, why butter is appearing on our markets in Chicago from 
Siberia, pork from China, wheat from Canada, etc. The mini- 
mum wage of heathen lands, which is a bare existence, will be 
a factor in the not distant future, that will open the eyes of 
many to the truth, that, our present high standard of living can- 
not be maintained either by protective tariff, — ^which has been 



11 The Technical World, April 1910. 



TRANSPORTATION AND DISTRIBUTION 177 

tried and found wanting, — or by our low tariff, — lately de- 
manded by a public beginning to feel the first pangs of a country 
growing old. 

The requisite scarcity of consumption goods for the lower 
multitude, is rigorously maintained by all the laws of the com- 
mercial world today. What would happen if it were otherwise ! 
Prices, profits and wages diminish in proportion as the quantity 
of consumption goods in the market increases. All humanitarian 
suggestions such as "providing a minimum wage," "better social 
environments," "higher standard of living for the multitude," 
are asking that the multitude be supplied with more use goods. 
But such noble sentiment is opposed by the laws of the commer- 
cial world which demand scarcity, and not plenty. And a candid 
mind will admit, that, for himself, he could not sell that which 
he is now offering, and get sufficient to support himself and 
family, if every person had plenty of the commodity he offers 
for sale. It is possible to change these laws, but no one has 
hitherto suggested a method. 

Under The Other Economics, Christian nations, instead of 
building navies to promote and defend a business of making 
into cash dividends the ignorance and necessities of the heathen, 
would send teachers of applied science to accompany their mis- 
sionaries. While saving their souls they would help them to 
abolish their poverty and obtain for themselves the wealth 
which the bounties of nature, in their own countries, are waiting 
to give them. 

The lonely lighthouse keeper can now be released. The 
automatic lighthouse and atomatic buoys, now being adopted 
by the United States government, only require inspection and 
attention at long intervals.^^ j^ Q^e instrument the light is ex- 
tinguished automatically by sunlight, at sunrise, and revived 
as night approaches. One type of buoy generates its gas by 
water, fed automatically to the carbide which it contains. It 



12 Popular Mechanics, Nov. igio. 



178 EXODUS FROM POVERTY ' 

whistles perpetual blasts of warning and gives forth a light 
which is visible at a distance of twenty miles. The lights con- 
tinue from one to five years, or more, according to the amount 
of fuel installed. 

Mr. Thomas A. Edison says that automatic stores are now 
possible.^^ "A few electro-magnets controlling chutes and hop- 
pers, and the thing is done. I wonder the big five and ten-cent 
stores don't try the thing out so that a small package of coal 
and potatoes would cost the poor man relatively no more than 
if he took a carload. If I get time, I hope to produce a vend- 
ing machine and a store that will deliver specific quantities of 
supplies, as paid for on the spot." Like most public spirited 
men, Mr. Edison thought out things that would be of vast good 
if we were adjusted to a system which would permit us to dis- 
jilace labor to the uttermost and to produce goods enough for 
all. A price system, as long as we continue it, will continue 
impoverishment and concentration of wealth; and his sug- 
gested invention would but accelerate the law of evolution in 
that direction. Suppose it should come to pass that automatic 
stores displaced the girls in the department stores. Would not 
their ability to support themselves be less than their "pittance" 
which of late has called forth much sympathy from the pub- 
lic? Four dollars per week to them, if that is their present 
average wage, would be better than idleness. Coal and pota- 
toes at a penny per bushel, to the person without money, is a 
more serious problem than Klondyke prices to the person with 
money to meet them. 

Three-fourths of the labor now expended in the retail dis- 
tribution of goods could be saved for re-employment, provided 
we were adjusted to the other system, by simply consolidating the 
retail stores into larger ones. Mr. William C. Brown, president 
of the New York Central Lines, when giving an illustration of 
this waste of labor, in an address before the Cleveland Cham- 



is Popular Electricitly, June 1910. 



TRANSPORTATION AND DISTRIBUTION 179 

ber of Commerce, said: "I live in an apartment building in 
New York which contains about forty apartments, ^ince the 
agitation in regard to prices has been in progress, I have taken 
pains to observe the methods of the retailers of meats, vege- 
tables and groceries ; and I have seen fifteen delivery wagons, 
each with a box or basket or two, waiting in each other's way 
to get into the area where delivery to the apartment is made. 
One wagon with one team and one driver would have handled 
without trouble all that the fifteen wagons contained. In the 
four sides of one city block, not far from where I live, there 
are sixteen small stores, or markets, selling groceries, meats, 
vegetables and so forth. Four of them without any trouble 
could do all the business of the sixteen."^* By this consolida- 
tion of the business he believes that the owners and employees 
of twelve out of the sixteen stores could be released for other 
work, and are doing work which is useless. But Mr. Brown 
makes no provision for the displaced. Shall they join their 
capital and put in a railway to parallel his lines? If not, with 
whom shall they enter into competition and overcrowd their 
business? (See Chapter III, Part II.) 

Under .The Other Economics, raw materials, partly fin- 
ished and finished products, would not be transported over long 
distances, to and fro over land and sea, in the interests of capi- 
talists seeking profits in trade. When labor could be saved by 
doing so, goods would be produced in localities where they are 
consumed. When hydro-electric power is generally substituted 
for steam power, domestic or neighborhood manlifacture would 
return, having all the advantages of the factory system and none 
of its disadvantages. While steam engine, shafting and belts 
need to be under one roof, in a great building, electric power 
conveyed on wires can be supplied to many neighborhoods from 
a power plant a hundred or more miles away. Much of the 
transportation of goods would be more local than at present, 



14 Th« New York TlmeB, May 27, 1910. 



180 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

and when transportation of raw materials or products over long 
distances were required, they would be shipped directly to 
neighborhoods where they were wanted, without rehandling. 

When we consider the possible avoidance of transportation 
and the universal use of labor-saving devices, of which we have 
given some examples in this chapter, we may safely assume that 
the transportation of products, equal to the present output, 
would not require more than one-fifth of the number of freight 
handlers who are now occupied in performing this work. 

This would reduce the more than one million and five hun- 
dred thousand steam railway employees, who were employed in 
our country in 1911, to about three hundred and thirty thousand ; 
the more than seventy-eight thousand boatmen and sailors would 
be reduced to about sixteen thousand. Perhaps one hundred 
thousand, or about one-sixth of those who were classed as sales- 
men and saleswomen, would still be needed to assist in the new 
form of distribution of goods; but the total number employed 
in transportation and distribution of products would have been 
reduced to about four hundred and ninety thousand. 

According to the estimates of this chapter and the three 
preceding it, labor, equal to the annual labor of about one mil- 
lion three hundred and seventy thousand work-people, would be 
sufficient to produce the principal food supplies, the principal 
articles of common clothing, that part of the present supply of 
mine products which would still be needed, and could do the 
work of transportation and distribution for the whole population 
of the United States. 

According to the government estimates in 1900, six million 
were unemployed some part of the year, and more than two 
million men were unemployed from four to six months of the 
year.* To this must be added the number of women seeking 



* [The U. S. Census of 1910 does not give the number of unemployed ; but 
the number of men 15 years of age and over is 32,425,805 and number of married 
men is 18.093.498 ; while the total number of wage workers, male and female, 
as given In the best labor month is 7,006,853. The conclusion seems certain 



TRANSPORTATION AND DISTRIBUTION 181 

work. Careful investigations have shown that not more than 
twelve per cent, of unemployment can be charged to laziness: 
laziness, in most instances, is caused by hopelessness. Among 
those who are seeking work, are men of skill who could superin- 
tend the unskilled. Labor union records show that in highly 
skilled trades, thirty per cent, of labor, on the average, is unem- 
ployed. 

Much less than the number of our work-people who are 
unemployed and seeking work, if furnishd with the best labor- 
saving appliances now known, could produce the principal 
food supplies, and the principal articles of common clothing, and 
could do the work of mining, transportation and distribution 
for our nation. 

Suppose that these estimates are only approximately true, 
or view them as conservatively as the reader will, they are yet 
sufficiently startling to set us to thinking along a new way ; and 
to cause us to question the divine authority of cave men whose 
business principle of "grasping" has been copied and further 
evolved by all men and nations until now. 

that a very large proportion of the male population of working age (not to speak 
of females) was out of employment some of the time. 

The population of the TJ. S. in 1909 numbered 75,995,575 and ithe unem- 
ployed for some part of the year were 6,000,000 and more than 2,000,000 unem- 
ployed from four to six months of the year. The population in 1910 numbered 
91,972,266 (not counting outlying possessions). If this same ratio held in each 
case the unemployed in the U. S. in 1910 for some part of the year were over 
7,200,000 while those unemployed from four to six months were over 2,400,000. 
— W. H. T.]. 



CHAPTER X 

TOWM" BUIX.DING 

Solitary confinement is a mode of punishment. Insanity- 
is most prevalent among the lonely wives of farmers. Poets 
and editors, who write about the "delights" of country life, are 
thinking of a summer vacation ; or were farmer's sons, who left 
the farm as soon as they could get employment in the city. The 
farmer and his wife, as a rule, are struggling to become able to 
rent their farm to a tenant and move to the nearest town. 

Under The Other Economics, and with our present means 
of travel, farmers could live in towns, even when employed on 
farms ten or twenty miles away. Farming is one of the learned 
professions. In our day of agricultural colleges, when, under 
The Other Economics, their poverty is abolished, farmers and 
their families could be persons of the highest social and intel- 
lectual culture. 

Those kinds of manufacture that could be best organized 
in small towns, without waste of labor for the nation as a whole, 
would be carried on in every town and village to supply local 
wants and to give variety of employment; for there is variety 
of talent in every family. 

No human being should be confined wholly to one occupa- 
tion. It is contrary to human nature. It is demanded for the 
majority by the present economic system; but society pays a 
fearful penalty for this intellectual enslavement of the major- 
ity. Even a loved occupation becomes slavish when unrelieved 
by change. "One-study Universities" have been attempted and 
failed. When a student is carrying forward several studies in 
different fields of knowledge, his progress is more rapid and 

182 



TOWN BUILDING 183 

he finds greater pleasure in learning. No healthy child is born a 
loafer; and every healthy man has talent in him which would be 
active if sufficient variety of employments and rewards were pro- 
vided for him. More heroism is shown by the factory hand who 
spends a lifetime in continually repeating the same muscular 
movements in feeding or guiding a machine, than has ever been 
exhibited on battlefields ! In view of such economic torture the 
wonder is, not that so many bright young men are entering the 
field of bank-robbing as a vocation, but, that there are so few. 
Nothing but the bludgeon and the lash of the overseer and cen- 
turies of chattel slavery could have conquered human nature to 
the extent exhibited in our age. Every child has to be conquered 
in similar fashion. After he is outwardly conquered the spirit 
of revolt continues in him. The waste of labor and loss of pos- 
sible skill and enterpise, by not accepting human nature's oppo- 
sition to monotony and adjusting the economic system to it, 
were enough to have provided wealth, for all, before the pyra- 
mids of Egypt were built. Under a less brutal system, as great 
a variety as possible of industries and recreations would be pro- 
vided in or near the beautiful towns and villages which the 
Nation "of, by and for the people", in a real sense, would build 
for its members. 

Could a government for the people, under The Other 
Economics, build splendid homes for all who serve the common 
good? Let us consider this question. 

A tree-felling machine can bring down a tree three feet 
in diameter in four minutes, and after it is down, saw it into 
logs. A skidding and loading machine operates over a circle 
in the forest having a diameter of thirteen hundred feet, by 
means of ropes and pulleys. It hauls and loads the logs on 
trucks, which carry them to the mill.^ In the mill nearly auto- 
matic machines handle and saw the logs into lumber and de- 
liver them to places of storage, or upon cars. In some estab- 



1 Labor Saving Machines, Samuelson, p. i8; also Modern Indus- 
trialism, McVey. 



184 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

lishments a log once started through the mill is carried auto- 
matically from one machine to another until it emerges in the 
desired regular or irregular forms, or even as boxes of tooth- 
picks ready for use.^ All the wood that goes into a house would 
be put into shape by automatic machines in mills, in a common- 
wealth governed by the principle of The Other Economics. 

Wooden houses, however, are a great waste of labor for 
the present generation and the generations following; and a 
scientific system of government would not ignore the interests 
of its young children, nor its own prosperity in future genera- 
tions. Brick and stone are more lasting than wood and are a 
great saving of labor, when the future is taken into account. If 
all the labor-saving devices which we have mentioned in pre- 
ceding chapters, not to mention others, were used in quarrying 
stone, shaping the blocks, conveying them, hoisting them into 
place, etc., but comparatively few men would be needed to build 
a palace of rock; and but little hard work would be required 
from beginning to end. For example, the new machine for 
making bricks, previously mentioned, enables two men to turn 
out forty thousand vitrified enameled bricks in a day. These 
bricks being impervious to moisture are estimated to last a thou- 
sand years. The machine is entirely automatic. "From the time 
that the material is dumped into the hopper at one end, until 
the green bricks are removed to the drying trucks, the human 
hand does not enter into the method of production in any way."^ 

The metamorphosis of civilizations, from the early stage 
and primitive life to that of concentrated wealth and multiplied 
want for the majority, has been called an advance of civiliza- 
tion; but the advances recorded, often constitute a record of the 
favored few and not of the majority of the people. Wealth 
could not concentrate without being deducted from people. No 
nation, or civilization composed of numerous nations, can at- 
tain wealth and peace when the ruling principle of every indi- 



2 Principles of Economics, Fetter. 

3 The Technical World, Sept. 1909. 



TOWN BUILDING 185 

vidual citizen is an antagonistic struggle to get much from others 
and give back but little. The total product of wealth, by such 
an idiotic endeavor, can but grow less and less for the majorit^y 
as the amount of ''inventions and power machinery, controlled by 
the ever-lessening number of 'fittest fighters' ", increases. Dis- 
content and violence are the next steps. Then, ages afterward, 
men dig up the remains of the so-called civilizations, find- 
ing evidences in every quarter of the futility of man's endeavors 
to perpetuate a government based on a wrong economic prin- 
ciple. The historical student knows that our boasted modern 
civilization is already reaching the pangs of the last stage of 
this metamorphosis without achieving even as much, along the 
lines of true culture, as have some other ages. 

There have been other concrete ages. Ours has only ar- 
rived; but is here — ready and waiting to help enrich us if we 
were wise enough to adjust ourselves to a business principle 
that would permit it to be of general benefit. A house can now 
be "poured" in a day, and it can be indefinitely enlarged and 
can be shaped to any desired style of architecture. A booklet 
written by Thomas A. Edison informs us that houses con- 
structed of .concrete can be built in lots of one hundred or more, 
and that it is possible to cast a house complete in six hours by 
pouring into iron moulds having the form of a house. 

After removing the forms, or moulds, there is left standing 
a complete house with a fine surface, plain or ornamental, all in 
one solid piece, including the cellar, partitions, floors, roof, stairs, 
mantels, veranda — in fact everything. The windows and doors, 
if of wood, are the only parts of the house that would be com- 
bustible. Every variety of house, including ornamentations, 
size of rooms, height of building and architectural design can 
be attained by arrangement of the forms. The house when built 
by this automatic method is waterproof and damp proof and the 
houses when built will last a thousand years ; for in Italy, at the 
present time, concrete structures exist which were made of old 
Roman cement, and they are still in a good state of preservation. 



186 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

although they were constructed more than two thousand years 
ago. Concrete will last as long" as granite and will stand fire 
better than any known stone. 

After reading this publication by Mr. Edison we could not 
avoid thinking of a carpenter and builder in Nazareth who lived 
when those Roman buildings of concrete were being constructed ; 
and who knew that others had been built before his day. He 
was a mechanic as well as a deep thinker on sociological and 
economic subjects. According to his opinion a. Commonwealth, 
having access to such bounties of nature as existed even in little 
Palestine, if doing business under the other principle of eco- 
nomics — the giving principle instead of the grasping — could pro- 
duce for its ctizens "sl hundredfold more houses" and other ma- 
terial goods. With the thought of the possibilities of machinery 
in mind, we believe that his apparently extravagant estimate was 
reasonable, even in his day; though it might have required the 
co-operative donation of labor and surrender of private property 
for a generation or two to produce homes like Herod's and the 
High Priest's, for every member of His Kingdom. Had men 
but understood the value of His economic principle of ''giving" 
and followed His suggestions, it doubtless would have "drawn 
all men" unto Him and into His singular "Kingdom of God" 
whose method of business was a direct reversal of that of "the 
kingdoms of this age." The applied science of the days of 
Jesus was much greater than the popular imagination has pic- 
tured. The carpenter and sociologist of Nazareth knew what he 
was talking about ! He had practical business sense. 

According to Mr. Edison's statement, iron rxioulds, cranes, 
traction steam shovel, conveying and hoisting machinery suf- 
ficient for building one hundred and forty-four houses of six 
rooms each per year, could be operated by thirty-seven men in- 
cluding foremen and engineer. 

With these equipments, the more than one million men who 
are now employed in building trades, could build a twenty-four 
room mansion for every family in the United States within six- 



TOWN BUILDING 187 

teen years; and when built they would last more than ten cen- 
turies. 

The making of cement is practically automatic. 

The human labor that could be secured simply by using the 
best labor-saving machinery in the one vocation of farming 
would be sufficient to produce the machinery needed in the auto- 
matic construction of buildings and cement making. 

The new state hospital at Lima, Ohio, is an example of 
what may be done along the above-mentioned methods.^ 

Materials for concrete are enough to build a palace for every 
family on earth and to supply all future generations; and these 
palaces could be built with the same ease and enthusiasm that 
children now construct their houses of blocks. 

The toilers in our consumptive incubating sweatshops, who 
make our clothes and who live with their families in two or three 
dark rooms and take lodgers to help pay rent ; and the man who 
is thrown out of work, using his last five cents to pay for a 
chance to sleep on a cellar floor, — these are victims of the present 
destructive system, according to which the scarcity of things 
desired is the one objective condition of value — with no Church 
or College or Statesman of our day lifting a word of condemna- 
tion against the fundamental principle of evil! 

In grading town sites there are traction machines for plow- 
ing, digging, conveying, and leveling the earth. At Dawson, on 
the Yukon, a machine, employed in digging and conveying gravel 
to assist the Canadian Klondike Company in the search for gold, 
is operated by electric power and has a capacity of ten thousand 
cubic yards a day.^ This is equal to one and a half million hand 
shovelfuls. 

We have seen a trench-digging machine in use in the Pecos 
Valley, New Mexico, operated by three men, which dug a trench 
eight feet deep at the rate of two miles a day ; — laying tile at the 
same time. There is a similar machine which enables one man 



*Zion's Herald, Boston, Jan. 2y, 1910. 
5 Popular Electricity, Feb. 191 1. 



188 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

to dig a trench six feet deep at the rate of about a half mile in 
ten hours.^ At Santa Monica, California, a machine is used 
which lays a continuous line of concrete pipe which is polished 
within and without as it is deposited in the trench. This trac- 
tion machine makes and deposits the pipe in the trench in the 
same operation. It moves along in the trench ahead of the 
finished pipe, and will manufacture pipe up to thirty inches in 
diameter as desired. There is a trench-filling machine that en- 
ables two men to fill twenty-five miles of trench in a day.'^ These 
machines can be still further enlarged. 

In about three months, six men and machines could dig 
trenches and lay pipes for sewers, water mains, and pneumatic 
tubes for a town of two thousand inhabitants living on four 
hundred one-acre lots ; after which the machines could be passed 
on to other fields for town sites. 

In preparing crushed rock to be used in paving the streets, 
a machine would be used like the one now installed in the plant 
of the Biwabik Mining Company at Biwabik, Minnesota, which 
can crush pieces of rock weighing ten tons and can produce a 
forty-car train load per hour.^ 

By the aid of machinery, which would be further described 
but for its common knowledge to most readers, the whole work 
of digging trenches, making and laying pipes, and paving streets, 
alleys and walks for a town of two thousand inhabitants, living 
on four hundred one-acre lots, would not require more than the 
labor of twenty men for one year. 

At this rate about fifty-eight thousand men could do all 
this work upon town sites sufficient to contain the whole popula- 
tion of the United States, in sixteen years. But in the adjust- 
ment to the principle of The Other Economics this department 
of labor would not be a difficult problem nor require the amount 



6 The World's Work, Jan. 191 1; also The Technical World, May 

1911. 

7 James A. King in the Technical World, Dec. 1910. 

8 Popular Mechanics, Feb. 191 1. 



TOWN BUILDING 189 

of labor given in this estimate, owing to the fact, that there are 
many good houses already in existence and many cities which 
might not rieed to be generally changed for some time to come. 
But, unless we abolish our present system of "grasping", the 
possible blessings of labor-saving machinery are but fantasies 
such as rise before the vision of men in their hours of delirium. 



CHAPTER XI 

WXLA.I^TH ANI> IiHISUBi: FOB AI^I> 

They who imagine that making labor-saving machines 
gives employment to labor, equal to the labor displaced by the 
machines, are misled by the fact that most of the labor, dis- 
placed by the introduction of power machinery, has been re- 
employed in effecting the readjustment to the change. They 
are not sufficiently acquainted with the industrial conditions, 
in the days of their grandfathers, to know that it has not been 
re-employed in increasing the per capita amount of consump- 
tion goods. Most of it has been re-employed in changing the 
tools of production, trade and transportation and in substitut- 
ing new kinds of consumption goods for some previously con- 
sumed. The former average amount and varieties of scarcity 
and poverty for the common people continued, as we have 
shown in the chapter on Wages. The amount of consumption 
goods, even for the capitalist class, has not been increased by 
the introduction of steam power. The captains ot mdustry are 
fewer in proportion to the population, and they do not con- 
sume more than the greater number of smaller capitalists 
previously consumed. 

The scarcity and prices of consumption goods have been 
maintained in the interests of trade; for otherwise profits for 
traders and wages for their employees could not have been 
obtained by handling the goods after they were produced. 
Under the present system of business, if traders cannot 
obtain profits, goods cannot be sold in the markets, and capital 
and labor are thrown out of employment; for they cannot con- 
tinue to produce goods which the traders will not buy. 

190 



WEALTH AND LEISURE FOR ALL 191 

Under The Other Economics there would be no trade, no prices, 
no profits and no wages to limit production and distribution and 
to perpetuate poverty. 

The notion that ''making labor-saving machines" gives em- 
ployment to labor, equal to the labor displaced by the 
machines, is too absurd to stand the test of a few moments of 
thought. If the labor of making labor-saving machines is 
equal to the labor saved by them, they are not labor saving 
machines, and they would be prodigiously expensive. A 
workman working with the aid of a lever in the form of a 
wooden canthook, is using a labor saving tool. In some kinds 
of work it saves a great amount of labor before it is worn 
out. If, making a canthook, gives employment to as many 
laborers as it displaces, and the working life of a canthook 
when in constant use is five years, and it enables one man in 
rolling logs to displace five men rolling them by hand, the 
making of a canthook, which is a simple piece of wood with 
iron hook attached, should furnish employment to five men 
for five years. If wages were $1.65 per day, a canthook 
would cost over $3,000.00. A man who knows enough to use 
a canthook should be able to understand that only a very lit- 
tle of the labor saved by canthooks is re-employed in making 
them. The same principle applies to all labor-saving tools, 
whether they are simple or complex in their construction, and 
whether they are joined with hand power, foot power, or any 
other kind of .power. 

The average steam engine would cost more than one mil- 
lion dollars at the manufacturer's price, if, during the time 
between its completion and When it is thrown on the scrap 
heap, the labor it saves is re-employed at two dollars a day 
for each laborer, in making another one. We have seen that 
according to the opinion of experts the steam engine makes 
the labor of one man equal to that of one hundred and twenty 
men. The wages of one hundred and twenty men at two dol- 
lars a day for fifteen years would amount to more than one 



192 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

million dollars. The pneumatic plow, scraper and spreader, 
used in the construction of the Panama Canal, which makes 
the labor of one man equal to that of twelve hundred men, 
would cost more than ten million dollars! A common foot- 
power sewing machine which makes the labor of one woman 
equal to that of ten former women would cost twenty thou- 
sand dollars at the factory. If the life of the machine is fifteen 
years and if the labor saved by the machine is re-employed in 
making another one, and each laborer thus employed receive 
only fifty cents a day, the retail price of the machine would be 
about sixty thousand dollars, since it cost twice as much to 
sell a sewing machine as it does to produce it. Thus we see 
the absurdity of the notion. 

We have shown that, approximately, about two million 
work-people, if supplied in all their work with the best existing 
labor saving machines and methods, could produce the princi- 
pal food supplies, the principal articles of common clothing, 
and do the work of mining, transportation and distribution for 
the whole population of the United States; and within sixteen 
years could build a home of twenty rooms for every family in 
our nation, and the homes when built would last more than a 
thousand years. This means that one-tenth of our working 
population could do more for the people under The Other 
Economics than they are all doing at the present time. We 
are therefore more than 90% inefficient as a working nation, 
and shall remain so as long as our present system continues. 

Machines can do most of the physical work of making 
machines and of obtaining the raw materials of which they 
are made. They can do most of the work of keeping up 
repairs. They would need but little human assistance in the 
production, transportation and distribution of goods. This 
remaining 90% of the population, after the whole population 
is provided, by other laborers, with the principal food supplies, 
and the principal articles of clothing and commodious man- 
sions, could soon produce most of the luxuries, now enjoyed 



WEALTH AND LEISURE FOR ALL 193 

by the millionaires, in such abundance that there would be 
enough for all who serve the common good. After the mini- 
mum standard of living becomes equal to that of millionaires, 
the hours for labor could be shortened until no one would be 
required to spend more than an average of an hour or two a day 
in industrial exercise. 

This assertion is not visionary. 

The bounties of nature are sufficient, as shown in the 
chapter on Resources. The necessary machines are already 
existing and only need to be used in all operations in all indus- 
tries to which they can be adjusted. If the mechanical arts 
and applied science of nineteen hundred years ago, according 
to the opinion of One whose superior intelligence all Christian 
nations revere, would have enabled a commonwealth under 
Th-e Other Economics to .produce and distribute "a hundred- 
fold more" material wealth than was then produced, we ought 
to be able to obtain respectful attention when we advocate 
the same opinion in this twentieth century. 

Shortening the time of necessary labor to an average of 
two or three hours a day should not be regarded as incred- 
ible. All labor is now, on the average, one-fourth of the time 
idle, and by giving it steady employment the hours of labor 
could be shortened by one-fourth, without diminishing the 
present production. This would shorten the ten-hour day to 
seven and one-half hours. Nearly two million middlemen, 
including those who are directly and indirectly employed by 
them, would be thrown out of employment, by shipping goods 
directly from producers to consumers. If they should become 
employees in manufacture, they would increase the number 
by about 37%, so that the former amount of production in 
manufacture could continue, wih-ile the hours of labor could be 
still further reduced to less fhan three hours a day. As we 
have shown, the majority of our manufacturing establish- 
ments are small and poorly equipped with machinery and the 
Ibest of them use, in many operations, the muscular toil of 



194 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

men, women and children because they are very cheap and 
because the desired speed of the establishment as a whole 
admits of only slow work in some of its departments. The 
introduction of the best labor saving devices into all opera- 
tions in manufacture would still further reduce the time of 
labor from less than three hours to less than one hour a day; 
and still continue the former amount of production. Still fur- 
ther reduction of time could be realized by adjusting public 
education to a system of "learning by doing"; wherein tens of 
thousands of boys would, under proper instructors, find a 
delight in making their hands assist their brain in acquiring 
knowledge of trades. 

In agriculture the general introduction of the gangplow, 
alone, would save 60% of the labor expended in tilling the soil. 
This would throw 60% of the labor in agriculture out of 
employment, and, by taking short turns in the work, each 
person employed in agriculture, (whose hours of labor would 
already be shortened by giving employment to the great army 
of the unemployed), would be reduced to three hours a day, 
and the former amount of production would continue. This 
could be done by the traction gangplow. Introduce into 
agriculture, throughout the commonwealth, the other labor- 
saving machines and methods described in the chapter on 
Production of Food, and the average time of labor for each 
person now employed in agriculture, if retained in agricul- 
ture and permitted to have an equal share of work, would be 
much less than an hour a day. 

And when the hours of labor are much shortened, they 
can be still further shortened by giving self-respect and hap- 
piness to the great multitude who are now thrown upon the 
human junk heap, when, on account of age or physical infir- 
mitites, they are no longer able to endure hard work for ten 
hours a day. All boys and girls would be benefited as well as 
thoroughly educated by taking short turns at work in the 
industries of the commonwealth. All women could give a lit- 



WEALTH AND LEISURE FOR ALL 195 

tie of their time to the nation's industries when the nation is 
doing all hard work for them. We take no account of prisoners, 
for it is questionable whether such would exist under The Other 
Economics where there would be plenty for all who labor. Those 
who were in the learned professions would need two hours a day 
in industrial pursuits ; their mental and physical health would be 
benefited by such diversion. 

When we turn our thoughts away from money, prices, 
profits and wages, and imagine all Americans occupied in the 
work of multiplying the best existing labor-saving devices, 
and using them in all operations and in all industries to dis- 
place and re-employ labor to the greatest extent possible — aim- 
ing to produce things desired until they can no longer be given 
away to those who assist in their production and distribu- 
tion — we cannot but see that under such a system of business 
it would not be many years until men would refer to our 
present system of economics as the chief est relic of barbarism. 

Let each man make his own estimates; this book is only 
intended to help men to use their own eyes and to do their 
own thinking. 

Whenever anyone sees work being done by hand or with 
slow tools, let him think of it as an economic crime and the 
product of a criminal system. Let him go to the public library 
and read descriptions of the best machines, existing somewhere 
in the world, constructed for doing that special task; let him 
estimate what would be the amount of product from that kind 
of labor if these machines were used everywhere in our coun- 
try where that kind of work is being performed; let him 
estimate what the men, displaced by the universal introduction 
of labor-saving machines, could do during a lifetime in some 
other kind of work, if using the best labor-saving devices; let 
him consider that labor, displaced by labor-saving machines, 
could make machines to displace other laborers who would be 
re-employed in still other work; finally, let him estimate, as 
closely as possible, the amount of production of goods for dis- 



196 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

tribution, including necessaries and luxuries, which might be at- 
tained if the best existing labor-saving methods were used in all 
operations in our various industries, — no one can continue such 
an investigation long without becoming convinced that poverty 
is an unnecessary evil existing because of man's superstition and 
folly. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE MENTAI^ AND MORAJ^ POWERS OP THE POOR 

The opinion, that the poor, who endure the scarcity of 
things desired, upon the perpetuation of which the existence 
of the present economic system depends, are inferior in mental 
capacity, is unjust and cruel. The rich and their cringing- 
flatterers naturally assert, that the size of a man's soul is in 
proportion to the amount of money he commands. There are 
other talents than those which are needed by a bully when 
wielding a club, or when engaged in the scramble for dollars 
in order to get possession of the bludgeon, falsely named, cap- 
ital. When the club is private ownership of the means of life 
in the presence of a poverty-stricken and hungry multitude, 
there are a great variety of talents which are not needed in 
wielding it, or in submitting to the will of its owner. Dollars 
are not the only thing in this, world to test the strength of, 
and to give employment to, the reasoning faculty. 

Even in relation to money, the poor exhibit mental power 
equal to that of the rich. The owners of a bank do not have 
as difficult a financial problem to solve as does the average 
wage-earner who is struggling to pay rent and to feed, clothe, 
and protect the future of his family on a dollar and sixty- 
seven cents a day. The diplomacy which a poor man's wife 
uses in rearing her children, to keep them from falling into 
conditions worse than her own, shows as much mental 
strength as that which is exhibited by the President of the 
United States. Probably, when she and the President were 
younger and in school her grades were higher than his in 
every branch of learning. She became a poor man's wife and 
her mental exercises have been confined to small problems, 

197 



198 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

which are, however, sufficiently difficult to tax to the utmost 
the mental ability of the President. She only needs the knowl- 
edge of the facts, from which inferences should be drawn, to 
become equal to the President in international diplomacy. 
The daily economic problems of the poor are as difficult as 
those which are presented to the United States Secretary of 
the Treasury. The children of the poor inherit as much 
mental strength as his. 

Talents, of the kind which are permitted to climb, have 
always been climbing up from below; and the supply remain- 
ing below, for lack of opportunity to climb, is apparently inex- 
haustible. The falsehood, that, "there is always a demand for 
more people at the top" is contradicted by the smallness of the 
top and the size of the multitude at the bottom. An army 
composed only of commanding officers, whiether the war is 
bloody or commercial, has never existed. 

All normal men are equal in their reasoning faculty; 
although they are unequal in their other mental powers, and 
are unequal in the possession of knowledge. The poor, driven 
through long hours, to their monotonous tasks, are ignoraat; 
but the mental act of reasoning is the same in the most igno- 
rant and the most learned. They equally assume, that, what 
has happened, will happen, when the same conditions are 
repeated. Any low wage-earner can make the "inductive 
leap" from a few facts of observation, to a universal inference. 
For example, he may scientifically leap to the conclusion that 
all crows are black; because all crows which he has seen and 
heard of are black. All scientists make the inductive leap in 
the same fashion. A wider knowledge of facts, and not the 
reasoning faculty, distinguishes the most eminent scientist from 
the city scavenger. The natural ability to reason is not measured 
by the number of facts with which the memory is stored. The 
reasoning faculty, in the days of Aristotle and Plato, was 
as strong as it is in our day when men have more facts, obtained 
from past observation and experiment, from which to draw 



THE MENTAL AND NORMAL POWERS OF THE POOR 199 

their inferences. The ignorant poor do not lack abihty to reason, 
— 'they only lack information. 

All men are unequal in the proportions and development 
of thieir other mental powers. Minds are as various as faces. 
Men are individuals ; and each one of them is, in many particu- 
lars, unlike all other men. A far greater variety of occupations 
would be required, than can be permitted under the present 
economic system, in order to give employment to all varieties 
of natural talent. The world now has little use for any man's 
talent that cannot be turned into dollars. Man must consent to 
be put in a hopper and ground down, so as to fit into a 
money-making machine. They who are naturally, nearly 
shaped, that way are not hurt much. But they who are shaped 
by nature decisively for some other career, are hurt sorely, and 
many of them will not submit to it: they become loafers or 
worse. There are more peculiar talents taking their revenge 
upon their possessors and upon society in and close around 
the slums, than anywhere else. Detectives who try occasion- 
ally to outwit them when they become criminals, have suffi- 
cient evidence that they are not all dullwitted. Thie slums do 
not propagagate slums. The ancestors of the slums fell into it 
from above. 

There are .no hereditary divisions of the human family 
into permanent classes having superior and inferior mental 
powers. Mentally and physically we are the heirs of the whole 
line of our ancestry. The bottom and the top of society are 
represented in every man's blood. The fact that a parent's 
ears had accidentally been cut off, would not mean that his 
children would be born without ears. Ears might be cut off for 
generations and children would not be affected by it. The same 
is true of mental capacities. Take the stunted and ignorant 
children of the slum, out of the slum, give them pure air, nour- 
ishing food and favorable environments for two or three genera- 
tions and the physical and mental powers which have been 
repressed in them, will be disclosed; showing what they really 



200 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

were when clothed in rags and trying to find oblivion in the 
cheapest forms of sensualism. We inherit our mental capaci- 
ties from the whole line of our ancestors just as we inherit 
our five senses. Eyes and ears of the very poor are equal to 
those of hereditary lords. The mental and physical capacities 
of a baby in a poor man's cabin are not inferior to those of a 
baby in a king's palace. If the two babies should change 
environments, it is probable that the child of poverty would 
think and act like the child of a king. 

While every child has a mental inheritance received from 
the whole line of his ancestry, he does not receive from all of 
his ancestors equally. He is a new compound of hereditary 
traits. He is more than that: he is an originator of new ten- 
dencies within himself. Evolution depends upon individual 
variation, selection, and hereditary transmission. In the lower 
forms of life individual variation originates in the individual 
unconsciously and is involuntary. In man it is conscious and 
more or less voluntary. Each: individaul tends to become a 
distinct and a new variety of the human family. Every babe is 
an individualist of the most extreme type, and his elders have 
great difificulty in keeping him in the old paths as he grows 
toward maturity. Individual variation is necessary to prog- 
ress. Under a Fraternal Individualism which would be pos- 
sible when wealth and leisure are provided for all, when ''get- 
ting a living" is no longer the chief end of man, a greater 
number of individual variations would be permitted and en- 
couraged in the name of progress. Human progress would 
ascend to higher altitudes and advance im new directions 
undreamed of now. Individuality of thought and action would 
be encouraged to the utmost; but always in subordination to 
the common good or noblest conception of patriotism. The 
greater variety of talents would make possible a greater 
variety of material wealth for all. The "life more abundant," 
which Jesus favored and came to bring to men, would begin to 
dawn. The commonwealth, under The Other Economics, 



THE MENTAL AND NORMAL POWERS OF THE POOR 201 

would be as deeply interested in music, art, poetry astronomy 
and other achievements, as the United States now is in the few 
cents, per capita of the population, per day, which a few traders 
may possibly obtain by foreign trade. 

Under the present economic system, which is nothing 
but a continuation of the competitive struggle for existence 
among lower animals, some individual variations not needed in, 
that struggle have been permitted to survive. But they have 
a feeble and precarious existence and are always subordinated 
to "getting a living." Under the present system of mutual 
repression and plunder, how to get a living, is the one supreme 
problem for the common people. This is "meat-getting" and 
not life. It was Jesus who said : "Life is more than meat." We 
are not living, as yet, in the true sense of the word, and will 
not be living until we solve the problem of bread and meat 
getting; thrusting it entirely upon the shoulders of nature; 
harnessing the wave, the .wind and the various forces that stand 
comparatively idle about us. To many people, who are well en- 
dowed intellectually, the present kind of a struggle is a bondage 
from which they long to be delivered. They have other talents 
demanding exercise which at present are of no value in the fight 
for the scarce medium — the almighty dollar. 

Every man is more than a money-making machine or a 
cog in a wheel. The external universe is in the soul of any 
man to the extent of his present and future ability to compre- 
hend it. The unknown within the being of any man is, at 
least, equal to the unexplored regions outside himself. Our 
drudgery and anxiety over things to eat and use are indexes 
to our lack of life. We have too low an opinion of ourselves 
and of our neighbors, however great may be their poverty. 
The image of God is in man ! It were better to worship the souls 
of the poor more, and Mammon less? 

We have in our possession the diary of a farmer's wife who 
died, some years ago. She was one of those girls whose taste 
for intellectual pursuits was encouraged in the public schools 



202 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

and who was afterward turned out to crucify her higher ambi- 
tions in the competitive struggle tor a bare existence. We 
select the following extracts : 

"January 6 — Good-by, girlhood and schooldays! I am a 
married woman now. We are settled on our own farm. It 
will be ours when we can pay for it. I will do my work and read 
my Bible through every .year. I will read a volume of history 
or science every two weeks, five papers or magazines a week, and 
some other book once in two weeks. I will keep right on grow- 
ing in knowledge." 

There was her program. Turn over a few pages until she 
gets into midsummer : 

*7uly 10 — Arose at five. Did a large washing. Cooked 
for farm hands. Knit the foot of a stocking. Churned and 
made five pounds of butter. Read several chapters in the 
Bible." 

Turn over many leaves and see how her program fares 
some years later : 

"December 27 — I have not written since last May. We 
are making a desperate effort to lift the mortgage from our 
farm. We had forty cows and made cheese. To-day have 
been making soap. Have done little reading during the past 
year. How little I know ! Time is passing. By the grace of 
God assisting me, I will gain some knowledge during the com- 
ing year." 

Turn over another page, where she is in the middle of the 
following year: 

"June 15 — Have had the horrors ! If I were more ignorant, 
I would suffer less." 

Some time before her death she wrote: "O, that I had 
been content with the little things of life !" 

They lost their farm. The husband toiled as hard as his 
wife did, was temperate in all his habits but he could not 
clutch dollars and hold them. In the delirium of his last sick- 
ness he was a teacher in some great institution of learning. 



THE MENTAL AND NORMAL POWERS OF THE POOR 203 

Under the present system of individualism, falsely so 
called, there is very little individualism for common people. 
The mental powers of this poor man and his wife were not 
inferior to those of the man who owned the mortgage on their 
farm and could be more merciless than they in driving a bar- 
gain, and could more easily sacrifice his higher wants in order to 
save money. 

Wealth and abundant leisure for all, would not be as dan- 
gerous as poverty has been to all nations of the past. Men once 
argued against public education and organs in churches; but 
time proved their arguments to be groundless. In our country 
the common people are trained in public schools with little refer- 
ence to a life of mere money getting. They obtain ideals from 
teachers who are in one of the learned professions, to whom, 
an aristocracy founded upon knowledge, is venerable, while, 
an aristocracy founded on money, is contemptible. This 
nobler sentiment would still continue to prevail in the minds 
of the majority and would be intensified, should material 
wealth become common. Out of this multitude would come a 
movement toward something better than a loafer's paradise. 
After receiving such a training in our public schools, our young 
people are turned out into work for which their education has 
uniiffed them and caused them to despise. The majority 
must spend their waking hours in making, for instance, the one- 
hundredth part of a shoe, over and over again, until their 
monotonous task leaves them at the close of the day, too ex- 
hausted to engage in any other occupation. Thus, they are com- 
pelled to throttle every aspiration, but one; — a few cents a day 
added to their wages. 

There is but little individualism enjoyed now by any 
class of people. No clergyman who has a heart in him, and a 
family to support, is an individual in relation to the message 
he delivers, and he cannot be until he is economically free. 
When, by giving two or three hours a day to industrial recrea- 
tions he can have wealth and leisure for any loved occupation, 



204 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

his message will be his own — if he loves the ministry. Any 
editor, who persists in being an individual, is likely to lose his 
job. The publisher, who hires his intellect and conscience for a 
price, is in the same situation. 

The literary genius cannot write for his own gratification 
and for the entertainment and instruction of the few who can 
think thoughts like his. He, too, must become a literary hack, 
producing the stuff that will exchange for money to pay rent 
for shelter, if possible somewhere outside the slum. The 
thoughtful statesman cannot have and express his own opin- 
ions; if he does, he cannot get his living by statesmanship. 
The theater, which is one of the most powerful instruments 
for good that can be imagined, is now of doubtful utility be- 
cause it is commercialized and, to that extent, brutalized. It 
should be a part of our common school system, and then, by 
common consent, it would become as moral as the common 
schools, without ceasing to entertain while instructing. Ar- 
tists who may have the talent of Rubens are dashing off pic- 
tures for advertising Mother Smith's Soothing Syrup, or for 
the alleged funny pages of Sunday newspapers. The divine 
glory of human nature and its future possibilities are shown 
by the fact that nearly all of these sufferers resist thie tempta- 
tion to steal from their employers. 

If any theorist imagines that babies born in working class 
families are loafers and must be driven to activity by fear of 
hunger, cold, nakedness and eviction from places of shelter, he 
has not become acquainted with babies in working class fam- 
ilies. A working class baby wbo can creep and is learning 
to walk is engaged in very hard work. If anyone does not 
believe it, let Mm try to imitate all his movements for one day. 
Such hard labor is not hard for him, because he is led by his 
desire and is not driven by any kind of a lash. Healthy babies 
are not lazy. Therefore, loafers, unlike poets, are made and not 
horn. 

You w^ill notice that the little w^orker is not creeping and 



THE MENTAL AND NORMAL POWERS OF THE POOR 205 

toddling about to gratify his stomach, like a chicken in a barn- 
yard. Civilized man has advanced so far beyond the cave that 
his appetite for knovv^ledge has become hereditary, although it 
may have been awakened in primitive men by physical wants. 
The little child's great and ceaseless expenditure of energy is 
generally directed to enlarging his store of knowledge. He 
has everything to learn when he begins his researches, which 
are conducted in accordance with the same inductive logic 
that is used by older scientists. And, like other scientists, 
the more he learns the more he desires to^ know about the new 
world in which he is discovering himself and his relation to ob- 
jects around him. All healthy babies are students, and if they 
ever cease to be students the cause is in the educational sys- 
tem, the social system, or in something outside themselves. 
The quest of students for knowledge concerning agriculture, 
manufacture, mining, and culinary science, if properly directed 
and utilized, would produce for society most of her needs to-day. 
All healthy workpeople, as well as their masters, would be stu- 
dents all their lives, if they had opportunity along beloved 
lines, and if the course and methods of study were determined 
by the tastes of pupils and were as various as their mental 
powers. 

Taking the little one on your knee, you give him your watch 
to examine. He looks at it and examines it with his hands. He 
becomes acquainted with its color, weight, shape and density. 
Hold it to his ear, and he becomes eager to know what 
causes the strange sounds within it. And he will get into it 
and see unless you force him to stop, and then be weeps like 
an eager truth seeker, who finds a door of knowledge closed 
against him, and not because he imaigned that those strange 
sounds were good fo eat. The htmger for knowledge is as 
intense in the little children of the slum, as in the faculty of a 
university. 

While studying human nature as it exists in a working 
class baby, assert your authority and use your superior power 



206 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

to compel him to spend some hours doing notfhing else but 
examining the exterior of your watch. You will have a little 
rebel on your hands, and within an hour he would murder you 
if he could ! When the babe becomes a man and is a wage- 
earner we may expect his soul to rebel if he is compelled to 
spend ten hours a day making the same muscular movements, 
while his mind must be occupied with the same unchanging 
thought. Hunger and want have however conquered his 
rebellious inclinations as a general rule, and hie works on 
through life a manacled being. The frequency of recurring 
labor revolts need not surprise anyone — rather their infre- 
quency should surprise the thoughtful. Many men endure 
their bondage with a moral heroism which is infinitely more 
valuable than gold. But many of them think often of suicide, 
strikes, dynamite, theft, and intoxicating drinks which may 
help them to forget themselves and their loved ones, and give 
t!hem a feeling of strength for to-morrow's hateful task. 

If you experiment with a working class baby, you will 
notice that when you have held him too long to one kind of 
physical and mental activity, if you give him a change of occu- 
pation, his weariness disappears and he is active and happy. 
Monotony changes play into slavery; variety changes work 
into play. Idleness is not desired by any healthy child, woman 
or man. 

You will discover another truth in your experiments 
which moral reformers need to know. As a general rule, 
wlhen the little child is naughty it is because you do not pro- 
vide him with a sufficient variety of occupations to promote 
his advancement in knowledge or skill. Therefore, in a 
wisely ordered industrial system the simpler and least attrac- 
tive occupations should have a sufficient number of people 
taking turns in them that the time of labor for each would 
be very short, or the rewards should be great enough to make 
them attractive. 

The moral faculties of the poor are equal to those of the 



THE MENTAL AND NORMAL POWERS OF THE POOR 207 

rich. The moral nature of the people in the slums is equal to 
that of thie middle classes. It is true that more of the par- 
tially insane, whose presence would not be tolerated in well- 
to-do neighborhoods even if they could pay the higher rent, 
are conveniently allowed to drift into the neighborhoods of the 
very poor. It is also true that there are more physical, intel- 
lectual and moral wrecks in the slums, in proportion to the 
population, than in the more comfortable neighborhoods. But, 
as a general rule, the inferior moral character of the slum, as 
compared with the better neighborhoods, is caused by the 
severer tests which the moral nature of the very poor is 
compelled to endure. Two men may have equal physical 
strength, but one of them may stagger and fall beneath his 
burden because it is many times heavier than that which the 
otiher is carrying successfully. If the latter despises his fallen 
companion instead of helping him he is as contemptible as we, 
when we despise our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the 
slums and fancy that we are made of superior clay. 

Dr. Simon N\. Patten, Professor of Economics in the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, said in an address : "It is the income 
of families tlhat deterimne their morality. Families on the 
lowest incomes have to bear the full burden which vice, dis- 
ease and bad social conditions impose on cities. Each addi- 
tion to income enables them to escape from some of those 
evils. Cities are divided into sections where those with sim- 
ilar incomes reside, in each of which the protection from city 
evils increase in proportion as the income rises. Families 
change their morality as tlheir income permits them to change 
their location. A family on ten dollars a week has more moral- 
ity and culture than its condition will permit its members to 
express. Give them twenty dollars a week and they will seek 
a better home in whidh both morality and culture improve.^ 

Wealth for all, when attained under The Other Economics, 
would not be morally dangerous. The theory that, the lower 



iThe Nefw York Times, May 14, 1911. 



208 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

multitude of the working class needs the moral restramts of 
poverty and severe physical toil, originated in the attempt of 
primitive men to reconcile their germ of a conscience to their 
conduct When driving naked slaves to their bard tasks v^ith 
whips and deadly weapons. Now the few who are on top in 
the modern unbrotherly conflict, and their salaried retainers, 
can argue in favor of this theory and against the demands of 
their own higher natures, with greater skill. 



CHAPTER XIII 

]»[ORAI. BESUI^TS 

One, whose eyes are not blinded by a philosophy which 
sanctifies whatever is a financial advantage to the philosopher 
and to the small class to which he belongs or from which he 
obtains his hope of escape from the desperate struggle for 
existence which the majority must now endure, cannot read 
the newspapers containing daily accounts of crimes, of every 
description, without recognizing poverty and the fear of pov- 
erty as the principal cause, of which the crimes are the results. 
Newspaper reporters do not shape their reports in accordance 
with any theory concerning the cause of crime in general and 
they do not mention, as an item of news, the poverty of the 
criminal, or of his wife and little ones dependent on him for 
support. This is mentioned only incidentally as a part of the 
report. 

Generally the burglar is a poor man and his average 
income is not greater than that of a common soldier's em- 
ployed to defend the interests of a few capitalists engaged in 
foreign trade; while his physical courage is equal to that 
required in the army or navy. Let no one leap to the conclu- 
sion that we approve robbery by one man, because we affitm 
that robbery by millions of men, who elect a President or 
consent to a King, and agree upon laws to govern them in 
t)heir robberies, is also wicked business. When we become 
personally acquainted with the burglar, we discover that he 
belonged to the great multitude of the occasionally employed, 
without which the present economic system will not work. 
The "demand" for goods being irregular, according to the sea- 
son of the year and the accumulation of unsold goods, the 

209 



^10 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

opportunity for obtaining work must be irregular, too. There- 
fore, an average of about one-fourth of the working class must 
be without employment. When a laborer is unemployed, 
income ceases; and when employed the average wage is about 
one dollar and sixty-five cents a day in the United States. If 
the rich and ruling class in our country should be suddenly 
reduced to that financial condition. Congress would declare 
war against some ot'her nation for the purpose of robbery; 
although our politicians would apply to the bloody work a 
more pleasing name. Some real or imaginary insult to the 
American flag would be a sufficient pretext; and the patriot- 
ism of our workingmen would be aroused to cause them to 
kill and to be killed for the relief of the aforesaid favored few 
who began to be reduced to tihe income of an ordinary work- 
man, and desired to escape the pinch of poverty. And this we 
say, not in condemnation of the fortunate few, but, of the sys- 
tem which will only permit a few to enjoy the blessings of 
life. 

This is the financial condition of the workingman who 
becomes a burglar, and his mental processes by which he 
decides to become a burglar are about the same as those which 
have generally caused nations to engage in war. We are not 
excusing the burglar or highwayman ; we are simply affirming 
that human nature in him is not essentially different from that 
of the nation under our present brutal system, and that, the 
average burglar would become a good citizen if delivered from 
poverty. 

We do not permit our brothers and sisters, who must per- 
manently endure the scarcity of common necessaries, to die of 
starvation unless the starvation is gradual; and we do not imi- 
tate some savage tribes by killing the aged and infirm. Some 
of them we thrust into asylums for the insane (this is true, to 
a certain degree, in Oklahoma at the present date, and prob- 
ably of many other states) and others who can consent to 
become paupers may live in a form of poverty only endurable 



MORAL RESULTS 211 

to those whose ambition and self-respect have been crushed. 
The healthy burglar is too heroic to become a pauper, 
and he would be arrested if he should attempt to become 
one. His wife may be an invalid and his little children 
may be sickly, because of the unsanitary conditions of the 
crowded quarters where they reside, from which they are 
liable to be evicted for nonpayment of rent. He has been 
seeking work, but it is the dull season and he cannot find it 
unless in broken jobs so far away that the railway fare to and 
from it leaves him nothing above expenses. The means of life 
are in the hands of others and he cannot get access to them, 
although many of them are unused. This situation is now 
causing Germany to prepare for war and brought Japan to the 
front, as one of the military powers. Therefore the burglar 
secretly resolves to engage in war ; but he lacks numbers and 
is very unpopular. If physical courage is one of the distinct- 
ively human virtues, his virtue is glorious, for he is facing 
greater risks than were encountered by those military leaders 
whose names and deeds principally occupy the attention of his- 
torians. 

Often the burglar has at last abandoned his family, believ- 
ing that they would be better provided for by public charity, in 
the absence of an ablebodied breadwinner who is only occa- 
sionally employed and whose wage when employed is insuf- 
ficient to support more than one person in a cheap boarding 
house. Although fhe feels a blind resentment against society 
for the wrongs which he and his loved ones endure, his con- 
science troubles him. Therefore he seeks arguments to 
silence his conscience and to enable him to enjoy self-approval. 
Anyone whose general intelligence is sufficient to enable him 
to become a burglar, cannot fail to invent a theory that will 
harmonize his conscience with 'his conduct. We have men- 
tioned that, when the invention of the cotton gin caused 
negroes to be worth; more to their owners than the cost of 
rearing them to maturity, slavery became a divine institution, 



212 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

according to the almost unanimous opinion of clergj^men in the 
cotton belt, although they were in no way inferior in moral 
character to clergymen in New England. Probably the invent- 
ive powers of the average burglar are not inferior to those of 
the clergymen. The average burglar believes that all men are 
robbers and belong to gangs which are either lawful or unlaw- 
ful. Burglars, like all other men, are moral philosophers, and 
many of them can invent excuses for wrongdoing equal to 
those invented by an orthodox professor of political economy, 
to harmonize the present economic system of "grasping" with 
the principles of common morality. Both the burglar and the 
professor of political economy would cease to invent plausible 
excuses for grasping, should an economic system, based upon 
giving, be demonstrated in a Government Experiment Station, 
and prove that wealth and leisure could be attained by all em- 
ployees of the Government. The burglar would at once cease 
to be a burglar and seek to be admitted to such an organization ; 
and the orthodox professor would cease to defend the policy 
and morality of prices, profits and wages. 

O'ur opinion about the morals of burglars should not be 
objectionable to admirers of Jesus the Workingman of Nazar- 
eth, who expressed a similar opinion concerning the criminal 
classes of Palestine. According to His opinion, they were more 
ready, than the rich and ruling class, to enter into His proposed 
commonwealth, the principle of which He stated in the words : 
''Give and ye shall receive." 

Most suicides are caused by poverty or the terror of it. 
Read more thoughtfully t'he newspaper accounts of mothers 
who kill their little children before killing themselves. Such a 
mother is probably the reader's equal in moral character. Al- 
ready, or in a sihort time, her husband, who is a common wage- 
earner, will be in midlife when he will be thrown aside for 
fresher victims of the labor market. Meanwhile his wage is 
only sufficient to buy a cheap mode of existence for himself. 
By a ihard struggle the mother may add an average of fifty 



MORAL RESULTS 213 

cents a day to the family income. She knows what it is to 
bear and nurse children while eng^aged in such a struggle. 
Imagine the mental sufferings of such a mother, w(ho loves her 
children more than herself, as even animals do. Love would 
naturally say: *'It would have been better for them if they 
had not been born/' This mother who kills her little children 
and herself, is, after all, doing what many political economists 
and theologians, by their silent approval of the grasping sys- 
tem, believe should be done by some means. They do not 
believe that a loving mother sihould do the alleged beneficent 
work. They prefer that it should be done by a nonmoral 
force or person, under some such law as that of the struggle 
for existence and the survival of the fittest fighters. If these 
political economists and moralists are sane, that poor mother 
who killed her little children and committed suicide was not 
insane. She simply made concrete application of their gen- 
eral principle, and her moral nature was as good as theirs. 

Crimes like her's shall cease when poverty is abolished. 
And poverty can be abolished by a scientific demonstration of 
the wealth-producing principle applied to production and dis- 
tribution. Perhaps this heroic and self-sacrificing parent, who 
committed murder and suicide, was insane. Perhaps the ma- 
jority of the politicians, political economists and theologians 
are also insane, being hypnotized victims of an insane economic 
system into which they were born. More tihan one insane 
notion has become epidemic and has governed popular opin- 
ion many centuries after its orgin. Witchcraft was one of 
them; the notion that money is wealth is another; while the 
theory, that the total product of wealth will be great and suffi- 
cient when all members of society strive to give little toward 
that total, is the most stupendous blunder of time. 

Generally, we may notice that when the newspapers men- 
tion "poor health" as the motive leading to suicide, the victim 
was a poor laborer on whom others were dependent, whose 
financial distress would be increased if the breadwinner should 



214 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

become an invalid. Sometimes he is a rich man, whose con- 
tinued illness would wreck his business which needs his 
health and strength to defend it against his competitors. To 
commit suicide, and have his business closed out at once, would 
give better protection to his family against poverty. God only 
knows how much moral heroism is joined with this form of 
weakness and wickedness! Under The Other Economics, as 
we have shown, the fear of poverty for all who serve the com- 
monwealth, could be taken away. 

The cannibalism of the lowest savages is a heavenly virtue 
in comparison with the wickedness of the grasping system, 
highly evolved, in its effects on beautiful young girls among 
the very poor! An evil imagination, encouraged by philoso- 
phies concerning the sacredness of private ownership of the 
means of life, and thie brutal law of the survival of the fittest 
fighters in the competitive struggle for existence, creates the 
false opinion that prostitutes are a distinct variety of woman- 
hood, and that they are in their evil business, every one, be- 
cause they prefer it to virtuous married life. This is untrue. 
The holy instincts of true womanhood are in these young girls 
in the crowded tenement houses of the very poor. This must 
be so, because many of thiem fell down, perhaps recently, from 
the upper circles of society. They love things beautiful and 
are as mudh disinclined to drudgery as are the daughters of 
the wealthy. The desire for things beautiful and the holy 
instincts of wifehood and motherhood cannot be extinguished 
in them by the distance of a few city blocks. The young sons 
of the very poor, among whom they must dhoose for the 
especial objects of their affections, are receiving wages barely 
enough to give a man a lodging place in a room crowded with 
other men, poor clothes, cheap adulterated food, and per^haps a 
few cents a week for the cheapest and most poisonous intoxi- 
cating drinks which help him to forget, for a time. Where and 
what he is. The privilege of steady employment outside of 
the penitentiary, is uncertain. His young sweetheart is in the 



MORAL RESULTS 215 

same economic situation, with the exception, that, she must 
endure still lower wages. We admit that she should turn 
coldly away from love and her lover, for whom she would 
endure imprisonment and death. When she is out of work 
and hungry, and is standing on the pavement with her parents 
huddling with the othter brothers and sisters, near some old 
unsaleable furniture, having been evicted from the one or two 
rooms that have been her home, she s'hould resist the tempta- 
tion, presented by the agents of the White Slave traffic, to 
temporarily escape from poverty and distress, by selling her 
virtue. She should endure hunger, cold, rags, and, ten or fif- 
teen hours a day slavish toil, pursued by the fear of unem- 
ployment, rather than yield to temptation. While this is true, 
the English language does not contain words strong enoug'h to 
express our abhorrence of the sentiments of those moral teachers 
w^ho excuse and defend an economic system which, through all 
past generations, has created the harlot and the slum, wherever 
it has built palaces for the few! 

The only sane way to abolish the White Slave traffic is to 
abolish its cause — the present economic system — which is the 
parent of poverty. And thie same may be averred of the prob- 
lem of intemperance, which will one day be recognized as 
economic, and not moral. 

In primitive times, families combined into tribes and tribes 
into kingdoms in order to be more successful in raids for plun- 
der, and to be better protected against their enemies. This 
eventually became a mental habit. The selfish origin of the 
habit was forgotten and patriotism became a spontaneous and 
generous impulse. 

A similar result would follow in adjusting to an organiza- 
tion under The Other Economics. Although the selfish desire 
for material wealth and leisure would be the motive impelling 
the majority to conform to its new business methods ad- 
justing to "giving,'* yet, after a time, the selfish origin of their 
habit of conduct would be forgotten and the mental act 



216 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

accompanying their new business conduct would become spon- 
taneous and unselfish, as patriotism now is. To those who are 
already capable of being ruled by benevolent desires, the intro- 
duction of The Other Economics would be a happy deliverance 
from bondage. 

Christendom would become able to see the Higher Chris- 
tianity which now it cannot see. The introduction of the 
reverse law of economics would transform the spiritual heav- 
ens and "make all things new." "He that would be greatest 
among you let him be the slave of all," working without wages 
as slaves do. Should this become the badge of 'honor and the 
object of men's esteem, soon the conception of God would 
change. Men would begin to say: "H God is truly great He, 
also, is the slave of all." Such, indeed, is the nature of God, 
for such is fhe nature of love. We see it in the mother who 
is the slave of her babe ; and she does not sell her labor for a 
price. She knows nothing of rights, debt, and credit in her 
relation to her babe. God is equal to her in relation to every 
human being. If He should become visible in human form, 
his cradle would be in the stable with cattle or in some similar 
place of shelter for the very poor. His royal palace would be 
some home of poverty and want. But He would, again, begin 
to teach men the blessedness of adjusting themselves to that 
other wealth- producing principle on which He bases the gov- 
ernment of His universe: "Give and it shall be given unto 
you: good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and 
running over, shall men give unto your bosom." (Luke 6-38.) 

His greatness would be of a kind unlike that which "the 
Gentiles seek"; (or the modern Jew, for that matter). The 
God, Who is unselfish and who really loves all men, has never 
yet been enthroned in philosophy, nor yet, in Christian the- 
ology. Men cannot "see God" as He really is, until they 
become "pure in heart," or, in other words, benevolent in 
motive. Our business system is the reverse of this. The 
economic system of grasping naturally causes the masses of 



MORAL RESULTS 217 

men to see a false Deity, who is an Almighty Grasper, self- 
centered, and as heartless as dollars seeking higher rates of 
interest. Immortality seems doubtful in the hands of such a 
Deity. 

In the religious emancipation, under The Other Econo- 
mics, the new viewpoint would disclose ''the likeness of a 
man" upon the throne of the universe; and it would be the 
likeness of a good man ; one who does not bear a grudge against 
anyone and "who sticketh closer than a brother" to all men and 
forever. Such a conception would be a mighty uplift to the 
masses. The knowledge of a mother's love is not morally 
dangerous to her children. The knowledge of the boundless 
love of God would be a greater moral restraint than all the 
jails now existing. Criminals do not believe that God really 
loves them and that His business principle, as stated by Jesus, 
is the reverse of that which now governs the economic world. 

Under The Other Economics, when men live to give 
rather than to grasp, they shall "see God," and the vision will 
transform their moral character. 



CHAPTER XIV 

AST OBJECT IiIiSSON NEIiDED 

Let the reader, who thinks our plan of a; Government 
Economic Experiment too great a task for our government to 
attempt in the interests of the people, pause long enough to 
consider the stern fact that something must be done soon or 
the workmen, in ignorance, will carry out a program of their 
own fashioned after the tactics of the Independent Workmen of 
the World. 

The crisis between capital and labor is not coming — it is 
here. 

The program of the I. W. W., if carried out, would be far 
more expensive in iblood and dollars than the peaceful and 
scientific test of The Other Economics. 

There have been ideal theories since the days of Con- 
fucius, but never an experiment in any other system of eco- 
nomics except the present. 

The theory that a steamboat could propel itself over water 
and carry freight and passengers was not accepted by the 
working class, nor the capitalist class, learned or ignorant, 
good or bad until the experiment was msde and was successful. 

Theory then became fact. 

No new laws were needed to permit the experiment. 
Threats, acts of violence, popular elections, and acts of Con- 
gress were not necessary to cause the world to accept the truth 
of the proposition, that : a steamboat propelled by its own power 
can keep afloat and carry burdens. And nothing less than a 
successful experiment in The Other Economics can cause the 
past-bound, backward-looking majority of the rich and poor 

218 



AN OBJECT LESSON NEEDED S19 

to accept it, to the extent of abolishing the present economic 
system which has existed during the history of mankind. 

We have shown, in Part First, that poverty for the ma- 
jority is inevitable under the present economic system ; and that 
Congress and all proposed reforms cannot give permanent 
relief while in subjection to it. (See Chapter III). 

The object lesson, under The Other Economics, must be 
established by Congress, whatever political party may be in 
power; and be made independent of the business of the nation 
outside of it. It must, if possible, be made self-sufficient and 
produce goods for its own members only; in order to show 
how much product of every variety can be produced and de- 
livered by the oth-er rule of business. Should it become mani- 
festly certain that, by virtue of the new system, their minimum 
standard of living should be equal, in use goods, to that of pres- 
ent-day millionaires, ^1.^ people of the nation would then, as a 
whole, gradually adjust to that form of production and dis- 
tribution without injustice to any. 

We have shown that wealth and leisure for all servants of 
the common good, could probably be attained under The Other 
Economics. At least the proofs (which might be indefinitely 
extended) are sufficient to demand an attempt to create an 
object lesson. 

To attempt to make an object lesson of the entire nation 
is visionary and impracticable; it must be eventually abandoned 
by Socialists and other radical reformers. 

If the government experiment in The Other Economics 
should be successful, its universal practicability would then be 
accepted by all, as was the case with the steamboat after one 
was built and tested. 

The world is now ready and waiting for an object-lesson 
in a more humane system of production and distribution. The 
doctrine of thie Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of 
man, is now accepted as a true ideal, by the civilized world 



220 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

except in the realm of business. This is a big advance. The 
serving class are no longer regarded as "earth born and mor- 
tal" while only the ruling class are ''heaven born and mortal." 
No influential individual would now object to getting worldly 
wealth by outwardly conforming his business conduct to the 
Golden Rule and the brotherhood of man. It is now unfash- 
ionable for very rich men to die without giving a part of their 
millions to some institution for the benefit of the common 
people. Their philanthropy is infinitely superior to the existing 
economic system, under which they have been compelled to con- 
duct their business enterprises. 

The world now awaits the practical philanthropist who 
will make a notable gift toward spreading the gospel of a 
government test of The Other Economics which will point 
the way whereby the work-people of the world may liberate 
themselves from poverty and its depressing fear. 

All low wage-earners are compellc ' '., engage in the same 
unbrotherly fight whereby the fortunate millionaire amassed his 
riches at the expense and impoverishment of the majority; 
their tactics are the same but they fight in a smaller way. 
They would gladly escape from poverty by The Other Eco- 
nomics, although it would require outward conformity to 
the law of giving. They would not be held back by any 
prejudice against the doctrine of the universal Fatherhood of 
God and the brotherhood of man. Public sentiment has changed 
during the past two thousand years more than we of this gen- 
eration realize. Today, a little government commonwealth 
or community of interests with all its members trying to be 
brothers in the highest sense and doing no harm to the world 
outside of it, would not only be admired and protected but 
would become another institution of national glory such as 
our public school. 

Men are morally superior to their present manner of con- 
ducting business. They are not wolves, except in the fight 
for prices, profits and wages. This is the big "prize-fight" 



AN OBJECT LESSON NEEDED 221 

whose immorality is, as a Colossus, compared with the ring 
prize fight which so many moralists profess to abhor. 

Civilized people, compelled to keep up repairs, pay taxes 
and support the government in war and peace, to provide 
against sickness and old age, seasons of panic and unemploy- 
ment, and try to supply their mental and physical wants 
out of 95 cents per capita per day, which is all that is pro- 
duced in Christian America, — deserve laurel wreaths of praise 
for being as humane, in their business conduct as they now are. 

The object-lesson should be the nation in miniature, hav- 
ing access, without price, to transportation facilities and a 
sufficient variety of the bounties of nature that, a circle of 
industries could be developed, wide enough to furnish all the 
necessities of life to the employees and to enable them to 
eventually build beautiful homes and provide those manufactured 
luxuries now enjoyed by the rich. 

Oiur most capable engineers, industrial experts, scientists, 
artisans and statesmen, of whom the world has known no 
superiors, should see that the proposed Economic Experiment 
is given every opportunity to prove the merits or the de- 
merits of an opposite principle when applied to the produc- 
tion and distribution of products. If, after a reasonable period 
of time, the government reports concerning its Economic Station 
prove that the average condition of want among its employees 
has been, beyond a doubt, lessened and that the constant tendency 
is toward the further reduction of want, and that the abolition 
of proverty is due alone to the energies of the members of 
the Station plus the new economic principle of universal giv- 
ing, then the problem of the ages would be practically solved. 

By favoring the creation of such an object-lesson, on 
a small scale, but large enough to test the principle involved, 
the Socialist political party would show its confidence in its 
ideal, and convince the nation that it is not merely clutching 
for a larger share of the small margin of profit which others 
are making. And by the plan we propose, Socialism would be 



222 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

able to bridge that vague gulf that lies darkly between its ideal 
and its achievement. 

The fear that the Socialist party will get control of the 
government, and all private property that should be collective- 
ly owned be either bought by the government by issuing 
interest bearing bonds (and thus place the masses under a 
mortgage to a privileged class forever) or would be taken 
from present owners by force (and thus cause civil war, re- 
sulting in greater poverty for all), would be dispelled. Most 
men are able to see the impossibility of greatly increasing the 
per capita amount of consumption goods without lowering 
prices, profits and wages and causing panic, bankruptcy and 
unemployment. They know that all industries are close on the 
edge of "overproduction" at all times. They know that the 
Socialist party, or any other party, could not change this 
situation by a series of compromises with the present econo- 
mic system, and that, the Socialist party or any other, in order 
to break away from the present grasping system would have 
to abolish interest, rent, private ownership of the means of 
life, the use of money or any substitute for a scarce medium 
of exchange and every idea of an income which could be ac- 
cumulated for future use ; for, these are interwoven parts of the 
present economic system and no one of them could be re- 
tained without reverting at last to all others. Such a pro- 
gram is too great to be attempted by an entire nation, with- 
out previous experiment, and too great for individuals to at- 
tempt without the powers of government back of them. 

But, if a political party or a league of voters from all 
parties, acting as a balance of power in influencing Congress, 
should advocate the creation of an economic experiment sta- 
tion, having only a few thousand employees at work under 
The Other Economics, it would not be regarded as more 
dangerous than any other experiment in applied science, or 
the experiments now being conducted by the government in the 
interests of Agriculture and for bettering the condition of cattle. 



AN OBJECT LESSON NEEDED 223 

If, after fair trial, the experiment in The Other Economics 
should prove a failure, this would be a demonstration that 
there can be no escape from poverty for a majority of man- 
kind. If the experiment should be completely successful then 
both rich and poor vvrould desire that all business should be 
reconstructed in accordance with it, as soon as possible. 

If the estimates made in the preceeding chapters are only 
half true, the object lesson in The Other Economics would 
show the way to wealth and sufficient leisure for all who con- 
sent to the principle of producing goods for use instead of 
for a "selling price." All wage earners, and small capitalists 
would naturally give their labor and all they possessed for 
admittance into the new system. Millioniares use but a limit- 
ed amount of products as they go through life, and, if it were 
demonstrated that the same amount of products could be pro- 
duced for them by another method, they would not object to 
the system simply because it provided equally abundant for 
all others. 

The very rich, as a class, would welcome the new system 
of business. They are not heartless. They are uncertain of 
the future and are making provisions against it. They are as 
philanthropic as the average working man. They do not enjoy 
seeing the poor in their poverty. They would vote in favor of 
giving wealth to all men as quick as the poor, if the happy result 
could be accomplished by voting. 

After the creation of the object-lesson, the change to 
The Other Economics, by the nation as a whole, would not 
be difficult. This we will explain in the following chapter. 

If, without the definite and well tested program of a Gov- 
ernment Economic Experiment, the Socialist party, for ex- 
ample, should come into power and undertake to use the 
whole United States as an experiment station, and every im- 
portant business proposition should be submitted to the 
people for decision at the ballot box, the nation would be- 
come hopelessly divided over questions foreign to the 



324 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

knowledge and experience of the average voter. We have 
seen that the present system of prices, profits and wages would 
have to be abandoned and it would require a miraculous ex- 
ercise of military power to compel the whole nation to con- 
sent to abandon it, unless an object-lesson had been first creat- 
ed, showing how to make the change to The Other Economics 
and what the results would be. 

The creation of the object-lesson should, therefore, be- 
come the chief concern of all Labor Unions, Churchmen, 
social service societies, educators and moulders of public 
opinion and, in short, every patriotic citizen of whatever faith 
or occupation or party affiliation. No Congress can long with- 
stand a petition, if the petition bears enough names of men 
and women who are in earnest. We would think that the 
organization of a well-endowed League, for the purpose of 
publicity and influence with Congress, would be an easy and 
effectual method of accomplishing permanent results. 



CHAPTER XV 

TEE GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT STATION 

The creation of the object-lesson in The Other Economics 
should not be a private enterprise. The money necessary to 
buy a sufficient variety of the bounties of nature for the circle 
of industries needed to produce homes, necessaries and luxuries 
for their employees only, might be donated by a generous 
millioniare. The money necessary to buy access to the sources 
of raw materials for this purpose might be donated by the 
millions of work-people; for, the money spent in strikes would, 
in a few years, be sufficient to create the object-lesson that 
would result, as we believe, in the abolition of poverty and 
slavish toil. But, an experiment, on a scale large enough 
to enable the few thousand families to be self-suffiicient and 
have no business relations with the outside world, would 
be most difficult to manage as a private or semi-private en- 
terprise. There are precedents enough in this direction. There 
would be danger that, in a group of a few thousand men, how- 
ever carefully selected, some impatient leader might arise 
and turn the experiment to his own immediate advantage re- 
gardless of the common good. Some religious, or other 
fanatic, having given or begged much money to start the 
enterprise, might control it in the interest of his hobby. 

The experiment in The Other Economics must be purely 
a business enterprise, although it does agree with the holiest 
impulses of the heart- The reader has not caught the idea 
of the Experiment if he thinks that there would be wealth 
and leisure for any or all the members of the proposed Sta- 
tion and its Branches at the beginning of the work. Em- 
ployees would begin with long hours of labor and with as 

225 



226 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

much hard and uncongenial work as is now required, on the 
average, in the various industries; for, otherwise it would not 
(be a scientific test. Being a reversal of the usual principles 
of production and distribution, there would be no special 
privileges except those given as a reward of merit to those 
who had invented means and methods for displacing labor 
and in hastening the attainment of a higher standard of living 
for all. The money-lord, who might take it into his head to 
finance such an enterprise, would, of course, expect some 
special privilege and, should it be privately attempted, would 
demand such as a member of the organization; and not only 
for himself but for his friends; and soon the present system 
of grasping would rule the business of the experiment station. 

In a Government Economic Experiment Station the na- 
tional government would have power to enforce all rules of 
business required to test the other principle of production 
and distribution. It could enforce these rules in an ex- 
periment station, though, not in the nation as a whole, unless, 
at last, all citizens had volunteered for service under The 
Other Economics department of government. It is now 
exercising just such power. In agricultural experiment sta- 
tions the government compels obdience to rules for agricul- 
turists which the farmers of the nation cannot be compelled 
to obey. If all farmers were included in government experi- 
ment station work, of course they would have to obey the 
rules of the government; and, if they were getting abundantly 
more out of life, they would probably not object to this kind of 
subjection of their liberty. 

The proposed Government Economic Experiment Sta- 
tion would not be contrary to the constitution of the United 
States and would not require any new laws except a bill 
authorizing the establishent of such an undertaking. Neither 
new laws, new inventions nor new human nature, are needed 
for this purpose. Transportation and distribution are lawful 
for the government within agricultural experiment stations. 



GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT STATION 327 

It would be lawful for the government to include mining 
and manufacturing in these already established stations, if it 
so desired. But, in the Experiment Station which we propose, 
they would not iproduce goods to be offered for sale in the 
markets (as convicts are now allowed to do), and they 
would not be engaged in trade. All products would be kept 
for use within the Experiment Station. There would be no 
national loss, because, all the money expended would still 
be within the United States. If a success, it would not be an 
artificial expenditure for any class of men though, as history 
teaches, many other nations have seen the day when much art- 
ificial work had to be given to idle workmen — which labor 
when performed failed to relieve the recurring poverty of the 
workers. If a success, the Government Economic Experiment 
Station would not only give permanent employment to men, 
but would abolish their poverty permanently and point the 
way to its universal abolition. 

Existing laws would permit a few thousand families to 
produce necessaries and luxuries for themselves without en- 
gaging in trade with outsiders, as they permit the members 
of one family to produce and retain goods for themselves. 
Men are not now required by Taw to buy or sell. 

It is lawful to pay and receive rent, and the use of money 
is lawful, but these could not be permitted in an experiment 
station testing the principle of The Other Economics. The 
government could prohibit them in such a place, as it now 
prohibits rent in relation to common roads, and as it prohibits 
certain methods of farming in its agricultural stations which 
are perfectly lawful elsewhere. No one now is permitted to 
receive rent from government property for his own private 
advantage. It is supposed to be used only for the common good. 
A recent decision of the Supreme Court makes it unlawful 
for a soldier to sell his clothes and one buying them is liable 
to a heavy fine and imprisonment. A soldier does not own his 
clothes for the same reason that he does not own his own 



228 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

gun. The government is already compelling obedience in her 
''stations" and in the postal service, under penalty of dismissal 
from government service and forfeiture of all advantages that 
belong to such service. Dismissal from government service now, 
would not be as severe as from The Other Economics Station; 
on account of the higher standard of living obtainable there 
compared to the best average standard of living under the pres- 
ent economic system. 

The rules which now govern admittance to the govern- 
ment civil service could be extended to a government ex- 
periment station, under The Other Economics. Admittance 
to service, and promotions, are determined by test examinations. 
The experiment station would he likely to fail if governed by 
a majority vote either of workmen outside the station or of the 
workmen, indiscriminately, within the station. We would 
hesitate to get aboard a train whose movements are governed 
by a majority vote of trainmen and passengers. Our proposed 
miniature industrial democracy should be about as democratic 
as the Standard Oil Company in the details of business, al- 
though organized for quite another purpose. Its business 
should be managed not by Politicians but by experts, chosen 
after test examinations open to all applicants at first, and after- 
ward open to all members of the Experiment Station. This 
would be democracy enough for carrying out the details of the 
general principle. Government of the details of a business enter- 
prise, either great or small, by a majority vote, even of Congress- 
men, is an absurdity too apparent to deserve more than a word. 
It is probable that Congress aided by the honorable President 
could not manage a blast furnace. Fortunately, Congressmen 
are wise enough to call experts to their aid when investigating 
details of business. Capitalists are equally sensible. They know 
that they would ruin their business if they should manage it 
themselves. Behind the curtain, someone else is doing the 
management and their brains are hired while the capitalist only 
becomes expert in selecting experts. In the Government Economic 



GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT STATION 229 

EExperiment Station, business, under The Other Economics, 
would be systematized and the best business methods now known 
for saving labor and re-employing it, (in increasing the pro- 
duction of scarce goods until they ceased to be scarce to the 
members of the experiment station), would be introduced into 
all operations, in the whole circle of industries jand into the 
homes. 

It would not be necessary to deprive any one of his 
constitutional rights, in order to start the Experiment Station and 
carry it forward. 

There would probably be no difficulty in the govern- 
ment getting a sufficient number of volunteers for employ- 
ment under the terms required in the proposed Experiment 
Station. The men who are now living in the neighborhood 
of mines, in shanties, needed by mine owners as a surplus of 
laborers from which to draw in busy seasons, and who must con- 
tinually compete for a chance to work, (thus impoverishing 
themselves by holding wages down), wouM be happy, if invited 
to help develop a mine in the government Economic Station, with 
the assurance that they should have, for some years at least, 
steady employment, and would not have to pay rent, and should 
have as comfortable clothing and as much to eat as now, and, in 
addition, should have free access to the variety of goods pro- 
duced by other workmen in every branch of industry as fast as 
they could be produced and delivered to them. 

This assurance could be given to them without any 
change in existing laws. Soldiers, some persons in the civil 
service, and other persons in prisons and almhouses do not 
pay rent for shelter and it is lawful to give them steady em- 
ployment, comfortable clothing and enough to eat. Millions 
of people in the United States would accept with joy the 
offer of employment under these conditions. Government 
service is honorable and the employees in the economic ex- 
periment station would be free to leave it whendissatisfied 



230 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

and having donated thteir services could have no grounds for 
claims against the government for damages. 

As in the construction of the Panama Canal, the work in 
the Economic Experiment Station could, if necessary, be done 
hy unskilled men under the direction of a comparatively few 
experts. Hundreds of thousands will now toil at the hardest 
tasks for cheapest food and shelter and enough clothes to barely 
cover their nakedness. 

But the skilled employees also would certainly appreciate 
the opportunity to attain permanent standards of living equal 
to those enjoyed by the present men of wealth. If the experi- 
ment should fail the government should see that the homes, 
machinery, factories and all improvements become the private 
property of the employees and be fairly divided among them, 
the government retaining the value of the property before 
it was improved. 

This would be sufficient inducement for the skilled em- 
ployees, who might not be confident that the experiment un- 
der The Other Economics would be successful. If the gov- 
ernment should propose that all em/ployees within the 
Experiment Station should receive no less than they re- 
ceived outside of it (and this it could do in view of the fact 
that the station would include a well balanced portion of every 
industry) the financial risk, for the nation as a whole in as- 
sisting in creating the circle, would be insignificant. But such 
promise would not be necessary. Men of skill as well as com- 
mon laborers will venture upon probabilities, as they do when 
they go to the Klondike. The government would not incur 
even the risk of losing the value of a little of its unimproved 
property. Its value would not be less after the employees had 
added the improvements. 

On the average, every two employees in the Economic 
Experiment Station should have three persons who are de- 
pendent on them for support; for that is about the average 
for the nation, as a whole, according to Census Reports. The 



GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT STATION 231 

number of employees should be sufficient to represent the 
essential industries on a small scale, and in about the same 
proportions as they now exist. According to the Cenus Re- 
port for 1909, the average manufacturing establishment had 
about ten employees, including superintendent, and about 
three hundred lines of manufacture should be represented. This 
would require three thousand employees in manufacture. Ac- 
cording to the Census Report, about one-twelfth of this number 
should be added for mining, about twice as many for agricul- 
ture, and about as many for domestic and personal service 
and transportation and distribution, as for agriculture. This 
would represent a population of thirty-eight thousand, includ- 
ing infants and those who are not occupied for gain. 

The Economic Experiment Station, at its beginning, should 
be an example of what the nation is industrially. And then, 
by producing and using the best labor saving devices now 
known, the employees should displace and re-employ them- 
selves as rapidly as possible. They would first produce 
common necessaries, until they have as much of them as 
they can use. Then they should turn the remaining labor 
power to producing the desirable comforts, until they have 
raised the minimum standard of living as high as possible 
by the unlimited use of the best methods of increasing the 
productivity of labor and by giving to the common good, (not 
as a sentiment, but as the best business policy,) instead of 
grasping from each other. Thus they would become an ex- 
ample of what the nation could become by adjusting itself to 
an opposite business rule. 

The cost of the Economic Experiment Station would be 
insignificant as an item in our national expense, for the reason 
that the government owns idle lands, undeveloped resources 
and unused water power for developing hydro-electric power. 
But we will assume that the government has none of these and 
must buy access to the bounties of nature in order to locate 
the various branches of the Experiment Station at different 



232 EXODUS FROM POVERTT 

parts of th'e country where they could exchange products 
with each other with the least expenditure of labor and where 
they could produce a suffi'cient variety of products. Seventy- 
six hundred families would require eight million dollars worth 
of farm property at fifty dollars an acre. This amount of 
land would be sufficient; for it would be cultivated in ac- 
cordance with methods for increasing the product per acre 
now used in the Agricultural Experiment Stations, and they 
would only produce crops for consumption among themselves. 
According to the Census Report, less than four per cent, of 
this amount should be added for farm implements, and less 
than fifteen per cent, for live stock, to give the present average 
equipent for agriculture, making a total of $8,920,000. A 
million dollars should buy undeveloped mines and quarries, 
suffiicient for their own use. Another million should buy suf- 
ficient tools for making tools and as much power machinery 
as is now used, on the average, in the manufacture of consump- 
tion goods for each thirty-eight thousand of our population. 
This would bring the total to $10,920,000'. If we added to 
this amount one thousand dollars per family, to provide build- 
ing materials for temporary dwellings and for food until the 
first crops mature, the total would be $18,520,000 or, about a 
half cent per week per capita of the population for one year. 
Double the total to allow for expense not accounted for and 
one cent per week, per capita of the population, for one year, ex- 
pended in a plausible venture to abolish poverty, would not be 
a bad investment even if it wholly failed. But, we have given 
sufficient proofs to convince thoughtful people that a happier 
result is more than possible. The probability of success is 
greater than that which inspires the beginnings of most busi- 
ness enterprises, private and national. 

The cost of the Government Experiment Station would 
not be more than two battleships, which after a few years 
are outclassed by better fighting machines and may be used 
for targets in gun practice. An extensive strike costs many 



GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT STATION 233 

times more, directly and indirectly, than the proposed Econo- 
mic Experiment Station, and success for the strikers is always 
uncertain. Why should certainty of success be demanded in rela- 
tion to this proposed plan for the common good ? Some venture 
is made in everything else. The universal strike which is now 
preparing and which is inevitable, unless some fundamental 
change is made in our economic situation, will cause suffering, 
expense, destruction of property and bloodshed more 
than can be imagined- Its success in obtaining even a few 
cents a day permanently added to real wages will be im- 
possible, while anarchy and civil war will be certain. 

The insignificant expenditure which we propose in the in- 
terest of peace and for the abolition of poverty is, by far, 
the cheapest way out of trouble for all property owners today. 
It would certainly be cheaper and more hopeful than "con- 
fiscation" without hope. 

And why should America do less for the wellbeing of her 
subjects than heathen China! History records instances when 
China, in order to relieve congestion in her large centers, 
went in advance and bought land, constructed cities and 
homes, equipping them completely at the government's ex- 
pense, placing furniture in the homes and improvements on 
the farms and, in addition, donated one hundred acres of tillable 
land to each home exempting all from taxation for three years, 
to such citizens as would volunteer to leave their homes and 
circle of friends in the congested cities.^ 

After a battleship is built and equipped for service the cost 
of its maintenance is great in proportion to the cost of con- 
struction. But, the government would be nearly free from 
expense, in relation to the proposed Economic Experiment 
Station, after it was prepared for beginning work. Its em- 
ployees, after the plant was constructed, could, from the 
start, produce for themselves a sufficient supply of common 

iThe Economic Principles of Confucius, Chen-Huan-Chang, Vol. i, 
P- 305- 



234 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

necessaries. And they would make and use the additional de- 
vices for displacing and re-employing themselves, aiming to 
produce the highest standard of living with the minimum ex- 
penditure of labor time. 

The government should give them the free use of its pos- 
tal service, pay royalties to private owners of patents on 
machines and other privately owned rights needed in the Ex- 
periment Station, and give free transportation for products and 
for the employees when on duty or when they obtain leave of 
absence to visit their friends. E'mployees of the govern- 
ment station should not be treated as prisoners but should 
be given great honor and respect as pioneer ambassadors of 
the advancing Republic, who are creating an Object-lesson in 
The Other Economics for the benefit of the nation — and all 
nations 

Convenient locations for the Government Economic Experi- 
ment Station and its branches can readily be found on our 
Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the navigable streams which 
flow into the ocean. Other convenient locations can be found 
on the Mississippi river and its tributaries whose waters flow 
into the Gulf, affording sufficient varieties of climate and boun- 
ties of nature. The industries of the Government Economic 
Experiment Station should become, as soon as possible, inde- 
pendent of railway corporations. Later, when the nation shall 
be organized under he Other Economics, railroads would 
be used for people and not people for the railroads. Trans- 
portation between branches of the Economic Experiment Sta- 
tion should be accomplished, at the earliest moment, by means of 
boat, auto-trucks, automobiles and short lines of eletcric rail- 
ways huilt by its employees. 

If it can be demonstrated that, by the aid of machinery, 
all kinds of labor required to provide for the present high 
standard of living enjoyed by millionaires will not exceed two 
or three hours of physical toil, it is assumed that most working 
men would not object to that much labor and would be will- 



GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT STATION 235 

iiig to volunteer their services if for no other reason than 
that of permanent peace and plenty. 

When necessary, the employees in the experiment station 
could build their own railway cars and the government could 
pay the owners of railways for use of their tracks. But, 
if the first branches of the experiment station are as well 
located as is easily possible, this would not be required to 
any great extent. 

The general rules, which should govern business within 
the Government Economic Experiment Station, have been 
considered in the chapter on **The Other Economics." 

All that is attempted here is to give an outline of the gen- 
eral plan and present sufficient arguments to prove its plausibility 
and its importance to the race. Its practical application should 
have the attention of experts and specialists of the genius and 
ability of Col. George W. Goethals. 

After the employees of the Government Economic Ex- 
periment Station have attained sufficient leisure and a mini- 
mum standard of living, (which is now regarded as wealth,) 
the nation would see that all its citizens .could be provided with 
wealth and sufficient leisure for other than industrial pur- 
suits, having been delivered so happily from the fear of poverty. 
The present motive — which compels men to get private pos- 
session of a large amount of the means of life to bequeath 
them to their widows and children to enable them to live on 
the toils of others, by receiving some form of rent, — would be 
gradually taken away. Each citizen would see a new way by 
which to become protected in the enjoyment of wealth and 
suffilcient leisure — the new economic principle — the enforce- 
ment of which would become the nation's paramount issue. 
He would see a way by which to become richly endowed with 
that which would be better than the present government 
B.onds. 

Under the new system, incentives to ambition wovild not 
he less than they are now, but more. We have presented 



236 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

evidence in the chapters on "The Mental Pov^er of the Poor'* 
and "-Moral Results" shov^ing that the attainment of wealth 
and leisure for all, under The Other Economics, would result in 
that Fraternal Individualism for which noble men in all ages have 
yearned, but have been unable to attain ; and that this attainment 
would start the world upon a new and larger epoch of enterprise. 

We have shown that very little hard manual labor shall 
be needed when the best existing labor saving devices are 
introduced into all operations in all industries. None should 
he made the victims of the commonwealth's lack of inventions, 
but all should be penalized by sharing manual labor until re- 
lieved by the introduction of applied science. 

Adjustment to the new business principle of "giving" will 
give rise to a new code of civil laws and give employment 
to the best legal minds, with this conspicuous difference : pri- 
vate rights to property will not be present to embarrass the 
rights of common good. Our present theory of government 
will then have genuine application, for there will exist no room 
for "graft" and personal aggrandizement. 

After the superior wealth-producing power of the national 
"object-lesson" is proven, the change to The Other Economics 
by the nation as a whole would give real and valuable oc- 
cupation to our public servants. 

This change would be attended by intense excitement; for 
the civilized world can now be convulsed over the possible gain 
or loss of only- a few cents per day per capita of the population, 
as is evidenced by Congress and the press relative to the tariff 
alterations. The possible attainment of wealth for all would 
cause the greatest excitement the world, in any age, has ever 
known. The exodus managed by Moses would be nothing in 
comparison with the rush of business men and laborers to 
escape from the present uncertain grinding life of competition. 
The government would have to regulate the expansion of the 
new business organization so that business, outside of it, would 
shrink rapidly and in proper proportions. The government could 



GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT STATION 237 

not fail to be wise enough to see that applicants for admittance 
into the new business system should be received only as they are 
needed in perfecting new units and that, when they are received, 
they should be so selected from outside industries that they 
would shrink in equal proportion. The government could not 
be so unwise as to receive too great a proportion of active 
farmers, for example, which would cause a food famine for the 
portion of the population remaining under the present economic 
system for lack of opportunity to be admitted. While the use 
of money was being abandoned by an increasing portion of 
the population, all who were admitted into the new organiza- 
tion should be required to give their money, in trust, to the 
government in order that it might be withdrawn from circula- 
tion. Under the present economic system, money is a scarce 
medium of exchange, whose scarcity is regulated in one way 
or another to cause the requisite scarcity of goods exchanged. 
Too much money in circulation is as disasterous to business 
as too little. When, finally, the whole population of our 
country shall have become employees of the government, un- 
der The Other Economics, "scarcity of things desired" will 
no longer be the one objective condition of value to any Ameri- 
can. No man would be able to get rich by perpetuating price, 
scarcity and poverty for other people. Then the automatic 
thief named money would be despised by its former owners 
and their victims. 

We have, if anything, been too conservative in our esti- 
mates of the possible productivity of labor, under The Other 
Economics, by the introduction of the best labor-saving meth- 
ods and machines into all operations in all industries. 

They are, at least, approximately true. By examining the 
table of references, the reader will see that the data for the 
estimates have been gathered from government documents 
and technical books and magazines which are trustworthy, 
and from facts of common observation. It is, at least, proba- 
ble that the creation of a comparatively inexpensive object- 



238 EXODUS FROM POVERTY 

lesson in The Other Economics would cause a bloodless rev- 
olution, resulting in wealth and leisure for all servants of the 
common good. If so, other national issues are of minor im- 
portance in comparison, and men should forthwith petition 
Congress to make a scientific test of the constructive prin- 
ciple of economics which we have termed The Other Economics. 

The pioneer outline of The Other Economics is done. 
The cramped space of one book has compelled a resolute ad- 
herence to structural data and unadorned statements. Some 
repetitions have been made, where deflections from common 
economic doctrines were introduced, which, for the advanced 
student in economics, might have been omitted. The many 
kindred sub-themes that clamored for experssion have been 
ruthlessly silenced. The many sociological problems which 
call upon the heart as well as the brain and are so intimate 
with poverty, the writer has left for others to treat in adjust- 
ment to the principles and plan outlined in this book. There 
is no pessemism in the spirit of the writer. A great hope 
illuminates the future. His labors shall not be in vain if some 
thought, herein suggested, hastens the realization of that hope. 



INDEX 



Abolition, not evolution, way of escape, 43, 66. 

Aged and infirm, how employed, 194. 

Agriculture, see Ch. VI, Par^ II; profit in small, 71; in Massachusetts, 
123; under The Other Economics, 194. 

Alcohol, for light and heat, 127. 

Almighty, not able to operate successfully present system, 42. 

Ambition, crucified now, 214; of the poor, 117. 

American Interests in the Orient, nature of, 'JT, 

America, how enlarged, 123 ; not now occupied, 123, 126. 

Anarchy, cause economic, 206. 

Apples, illustration in connection with middlemen, 33. 

Applied Science (see Labor Saving machinery), how introduced to ad- 
vantage, 114; powers of mostly wasted now, 32, 85, 131. 

Aristotle, powers of reasoning in his day, 198. 

Army, the first need of, 102; cause for its existence, 38. 

Aspirations throttled by present system, 198. 

Automatic machines, 131; brick-making, 184; car lines, 173; concrete- 
making, 185; lumber, 183; mail handling, 137, 173; at Panama canal, 
139; at Pittsburgh, Pa., 138; signals, 174, 177; stores, 178. 

Babies as students, 205. 

Back to the farm, 25 ; effect on real estate, 26 ; effect on farmers, 26 ; good 
only for a few, 27; motive for this issue, 26; reason for not going, 71. 

Balance of Trade, a delusion, 38. 

Bank-robbing as a vocation, 183. 

Black Death and its effect on wages, 22. 

Bleaching process, modern, 162. 

Blunders economic, 25-49. 

Boston, possible agricultural production near to, 122. 

Bounties of Nature, man's right to, no. 

Bread-line, a modern phenomenon, 165. 

Brick, vitrofied, 184. 

Brotherhood, how hastened, 107. 

Buffaloes, possible uses and increase, 124. 

Bureau of Labor Statistics of Connecticut showing profits in twenty-two 
lines of business, 68. 

Burglar, an analysis of, 209; the cause of, 209. 



240 INDEX 

Business, dependent upon scarcity, 14. 

Butter making under The Other Economics, 153. 

Canadian Klondyke Co., 187. 

Canthook, illustrating a common error, 191. 

Canning machines, 132, 135. 

Capital, a bludgeon, 197; a new definition for, 112, 167; going to waste, 
114; in farm and manufacturing in 1910, 51; "methods" counted as, 
53 ; of no value if equally divided, 52 ; total of in all industries, 68. 

Capitalist, his economic identity with Socialist, 112, 44; not a producer, 

113. 
Capitalistic State, folly of, 104. 
Cattle raising under The Other Economics, 156. 
Cave man inventors of present business principle, 181. 
Census Reports giving misstatements of real wealth, 21. 
Character, how changed, 107. 

Charity, effect on self-respect, 79; number dependent upon, 79. 
Chemical fertilization (see fertilization). 
Child, a new hereditary compound, 200; a scientist, 205; not a loafer if 

healthy, 204; of the slum, 205. 
Child labor, in cotton industry, 74; in America, 138; in Japan, 77; in glass 

factories, 138; under The Other Economics, 194. 
China, ancient method of eliminating grafting, 58; method of reducing 

congestion in cities, 233. 
Church, reason for advocating The Other Economics, 107; sin of her 

further silence, 107; the one thing lacking, 108. 
Civilization, its evolution, 102 ; meaning of the term, 184. 
Civil Service Commission of the Churches of Christ, investigation, 75. 
Class-hatered, an error, 51, 67; dangers of, 96. 
Clergymen, cannot be individuals in their message, 203; further silence 

dangerous, 96, 213, 215 ; under subjection, 61, 66. 
Clothing, how made, 161. 

Coal, amount used in making coke, 170; laborers employed, 170; machin- 
ery used, 168; quantity in sight, 125. 
Coke, produced in 1909 and men working, 170. 
Collective ownership of laborers, reason for, iii. 
Commercialism, the real w^r with the Orient, 77, 95, 122, 176. 
Commonwealth, the leap to difficult, 105. 
Communism, not another system of economics, 47. 
Competition, not a system of economics, loi ; retained by some Socialists, 

44, 103- 
Competitive struggle, beginning of, 13, loi ; includes big and little grasp- 



INDEX ' 241 

•ers, 104; results in small production, profits and wages, 16, 17. 
Concentration of wealth, in America, 82; in ancient Rome, 82; the cause 

of, 13, 84, 102. 
Concrete, materials ample for all, 187; the uses of now, 188; under The 
Other Economics, 185. 

Congress, investigating average Profits, 69; its impotency at present, 6-]; 
not so important as eggs, 158; troubled by little graspers, 103. 

Conquering the child, 183. 

Conscience prostituted by poverty, 61. 

Consumption goods, not increased by steam power machinery, 85; not 
socialized by some Socialists, 44; relation between marginal utility 
and quantity, 14; production of, limited now, 50; people sometimes 
forced to change kinds, 96. 

Consumer's League, purpose of, ZZ- 

Constitution of the United States in relation to The Other Economics 
Experiment Station, 226. 

Cooking, why sometimes bad, 146. 

Cooperation, not another system of economics, 104; affords no economic 
relief, 104. 

Cooperative grasping, original purpose of, loi. 

Cooperative Commonwealth, as the term commonly used, 104. 

Copper supply, 129. 

Corn, comparative yields, 123, 150; labor required under The Other 
Economics, 150. 

Cotton Industry, acres now under cultivation, 122; amount used in yard 
of cloth, 161; effect of cotton gin, 89; our per cent, of world's sup- 
ply, 122; present poverty among its workers, 74; machinery for pick- 
ing, 161 ; yield per acre, 161 ; under The Other Economics, 162. 

Cow, as a butter producer, 153. 

Crime, its cause economic, 36, 206, 209. 

Criminal poverty, its standard in Christian lands, 115. 

Criminals, the cause of, 114, 206. 

Crisis, conditions preceding, 13; our impending crisis not new, 97; not 
prevented by present proposed reforms, 25, 49. 

Culinary College, 145. 

Culinary Science, 145. 

Daily ration, in America if equally divided, 50. 

Dark rooms, number in New York, 79. 

Debt, prohibited under The Other Economics, 115. 

Delusions (economic), avoid idleness, 27; back-to-the-farm, 25; Com- 
munism, 47; elimination of Trusts, 35; elimination of middlemen, Z'^', 



24:2 INDEX 

figures and dollar marks, 63; foreign trade, 38; government control, 
42, 43; morality of workmen, 41; minimum wage, 34; more efficieent 
workmen, 28, 40; money and "balance of trade", 38; profit-sharing, 
42; protective tariff, 38; theories of some Socialists, 44; single tax, 
29; save as much as possible, 25; strike for higher wages, 29. 

Demand, effect of prices upon, 15; its relation to desire, 15; requires 
money, 16; the Orthodox definition of, 15. 

Desires, alone not exchangeable, 16. 

Destruction of products, when of advantage, 15. 

Destructive economics (See Grasping). 

Diary of a farmer's wife, 201. 

Dishes, how scientifically washed, 145. 

Dissipation, its economic value, 36. 

Distribution, scientific, 119, 172; under The Other Economics, no; un- 
equal, the cause of, no; unscientific, 57. 

Distress of people, counted as wealth by Census Reports, 21 ; created six 
days of the week, 21 ; gives money-value to things, 20. 

Dollar mark, and the minus sign, 18. 

Domestic manufacture, in the Middle Age, 80; displaced, 93; displace- 
ment about finished, 94. 

Dwarf, the race an economic, 17. 

Economics, The Other (See also Giving), appeals to intelligent self-inter- 
est, 106, 114; automobiles compulsory, 115; aim: wealth and leisure 
for all, 116; anarchist under it, 116; adjusted to people, 112; crude 
or higher evolved, loi, 103; demonstration of, the first step, 106; 
demonstrated how, 219; displacement of laborers a benefit, 151; de- 
stroys incentive to theft, 120; donation of products and labor, no, 
119; effect of refusing to receive donations, 116; human progress 
attainable, 108, 115; key: applied science multiplied, n8; lightens 
the work of women, 143; mining coal, 163; methods of agriculture, 
142, 147; methods for kitchen work, 143; never tested in past, loi; 
no prices or wages, no; no incentive for graft, 120; no barter and 
trade, 148; new educational standards, 205; only one other principle, 
loi ; proposed by only two thinkers, 47; providing recreation, 114; 
producing plenty, 115; producing wheat, 148; oats, 149; corn, 149; 
potatoes, 151; milk, 153; butter, 153; hay, 155; meat, 156; cotton, 
161; linen, 163; sugar, 158; wool, 163; clothing, 164; hosiery, 165; 
shoes, 165; lace, 166; millinery, 166; reversal of economic principle, 
lOi; requirements in order to introduce, 103, 105, no, etc.; recognizes 
people as capital, n2; rule for distribution, 119; raising cattle, 156; 
poultry, 157; saving, 700% of labor time, 166; the "wide gap" difficult 



INDEX 243 

to bridge, 105; transportation, 172; town-building, 182; variety of tasks 
an economic good, 206. 

Economics, the present (See also Grasping), adjusted to perpetuating 
scarcity, 14; cooperating for grasping, loi ; evolution of, loi ; not 
easily abandoned, 105; prohibits certain amount of poverty, 115; re- 
gards things more than people, 114; system of grasping, loi ; the cause 
of concentration, loi ; unbalancing effect of inventions, 102. 

Economic systems independent of moral motives, 106. 

Economic antagonism, cause retained by reformers, 44. 

Economic theories, ideal and ancient, 218. 

Edison, Thomas A., automatic stores, 178; concrete moulds, 185; suggests 
no economic benefit, 178. 

Editors, dangers of further silence, 96; not individuals, 204; under sub- 
jection, 61. 

Education, a new system, 205; does not now mitigate poverty, 28; unfitting 
pupils for present system, 203. 

Efficiency of workmen, object of this gospel, 40. 

Effects, as cause of povery, treated by many, 46. 

Electricity, generated by wind-power, 128; in the kitchen, 144; possible 
development on streams, 118; powers of the motor, 118; running a 
home, 143 ; running a farm, 142; waste of at present, 32. 

Ericsson, and sunlight power, 228- 

Evictions for non-payment of rent, 79. 

Evolution, applied to grasping, 13, loi ; in man, conscious, 200; or grasp- 
ing, a hopeless effort, 65. 

Exchange, not increasing products, 56. 

Factories, not supplied with big tools generally, 87. 

Factory-plan, cattle rearing, 125, 156. 

Failure of business men, per cent, of, 69. 

Fall River, cloth industry, 131. 

Farmers, Alliance, purpose of, 33 ; intelligence, when exhausted, 123 ; last 
state of, 83; their best friends, 86; under The Other Economics, 182; 
using machinery, 133. 

Farms, electrified, 142; game, 124; hired farms increasing, 82. 

Fertilization, atmospheric nitrogen, 123 ; chemical, 123 ; primitive method 
outgrown, 123. 

Food, cause of its scarcity, 125 ; might be produced by wasted labor, 160. 

Foreigners, ability to farm, 123 ; reason for restricting immigration, 36. 

Game farming, 124. 

Girls who fall, a close analysis of causes, 214. 



24:4: INDEX 

Giving system of economics (See Economics, The Other), and the ditch- 
digger, 87 ; bounties provided by the government, 1 1 1 ; Creator adopts 
this principle, no; collective control of labor, in; effect upon dock 
laborers, 74; extension of benevolence, 103, 107; in relation to simple 
tasks, 88; worked by automatic machinery, 74; not suggested by some 
Socialists, 44; not workable by one person or group, 105; requires 
intelligence, 106; discriminative giving, 106; sufficient bounties of 
nature, 106 ; giving only to those who cooperate in giving, 120 ; the trial 
of the new truth, 90; words of Jesus, 121; would evolve a higher 
Christianity, 216. 

God, economic reason for a false conception of, 216; abode, if on earth, 
216; His economic principle, 216; not yet enthroned in philosophy or 
theology, 216. 

Goods for use versus goods for price, 105. 

Good people, the cause of sweat-shops and slum, 41. 

Goodness, how attained, 107 ; voluntary goodness God's chief attribute, 141. 

Government, form of, no relation to cause of poverty, 48, 105, 

Government Control, a delusion, 42. 

Government Ownership, a delusion, 43 ; already being tested, 43. 

Government Economic Experiment Station, aids given by Congress, 225, 
234 ; cost to establish, 232 ; exercise of power and authority, 226 ; loca- 
tions, 234; methods, 230; managed by experts, 230; nature of its con- 
struction, 231; not contrary to Constitution, 226; purely business, 225; 
production and distribution, no; rules for admittance, 227, 235 (See 
loi to 130) ; relations and rights of employees, 227 ; size of first Unit, 
230 ; safeguards, 236. 

Grasper, big and little deserve sympathy, 23, 210; his object in politics, 40, 
102; low aim, 40. 

Grasping System of Economics, a system of special privileges, 30, 49; ad- 
justed to perpetuating poverty or scarcity, 13, 24; an idiotic endeavor, 
185; anti-economic, 32; brutality of, not in individuals, 19, 22; 
cause of war, 24, 36; criminal in tendency, 22, 23, 41, 204; creates 
literary "hacks", 204; cannot be harmonized with morality, 41, 213; 
does not reward honesty morality or intelligence, 29, 40, 41 ; demands 
waste, 25, 49 ; develops impractical dreamers, 145 ; evolves downward, 
25, 49, 185 ; evolves "fittest fighters", 185 ; flourishes in vice and im- 
morality, 22, 41 ; forces old women to carry hod, 76 ; forces women 
and children into slime, 78 ; forces men to act like brutes, 36 ; forces 
statesmen to act like monkeys, 40 ; halts the progress of the race, 203 ; 
its evolution, 13, loi ; its universal failure in the past, 48; its effect on 
Artists, 204; its effect on young girls, 214; illustrated by Robert Hun- 



INDEX 245 

ter, 20 ; intimidates Editors, Clergymen and teachers, 6i ; makes births 
unwelcome, 213; makes "things" of more value than people, 43; not 
adjusted to the majority, 14, 25, 49; ninety per cent, inefficient, 192; 
not effected by any proposed reform, 25, 49; only permits 95 cents 
daily per capita production, 50 ; production, enough for all, impossible, 
14, 24 ; productive of panics, 54 ; people dare not reason about it, 61 ; 
political parties but tools in its hands, 61 ; perverts human nature, 183; 
perverts the theatre, 204; produces the harlot and slum, 215; prompts 
bad workmanship, 41 ; requires the suffering poor, 24, 26 ; requires the 
homeless, 24, 62; restricts introduction of inventions, TZ', relic of 
barbarism, 195; suppresses talents and ambition, 183, 198, 201, 203; 
• system of mutual plunder, 102 ; suppresses statesmanship, 204 ; sancti- 
fies false philosophy, 209; thrusts aged into insane asylums, 210; 
thwarts temperance and morality, 41 ; unscientific in distribution, 56 ; 
where obtained, 19 ; war, its only relief to workmen, 36 ; waste in food 
production, 147, 160; waste of productive power of inventions, 30, 80; 
waste in restricted mental development, 202 ; will not admit of more 
intelligence or skill, 27, 28, 40; will not admit of more experts, 28; 
will not permit "plenty", 13, 24, 42. 

Greed differs from self-interest, 113. 

Guilt of teachers and preachers, 41, 212. 

Hereditary advance, 199. 

Heroism, where may be found best examples of, 183. 

High cost- of living, indicates a more, serious danger, 97; not to be remedied 
by eliminating Middlemen, 32 ; not effected by ordinary reforms, 25-49- 

High standard of living, how obtained for all, lOi, 121; cannot now be 
obtained for all, 178. 

Hillquit, Morris, definition of Socialism, 44. 

Hippopotamus meat, 124. 

Homes, effect on business if all owned ihem, 24; materials for building 
inexhaustible, 130; properly constructed last ten centuries, 185; under 
The Other Economics, 185. 

Honesty of no effect on poverty, 29. 

Hosiery making, 165. 

Hours of labor, how shortened, 193. 

Human family, no hereditary divisions, 199. 

Hughes, Governor, on labor saving machines, 136. 

Human nature, cause of its perversion, 183; evidences of its divine glory, 
204; now is ready for The Other Economics, 103. 

Humane Sentiment, thwarted by "Grasping System", 172. 



246 INDEX 

Hunger, a substitute for clubs of overseers, 102; for knowledge, in the 
slums, 198. 

Hydro-electric power, 118. 

Hypocrisy curing itself, 107. 

Idleness, economic effect of avoiding it, 27; fostered by ancient China, 58; 
hereditary privilege harms no one, 27, 58 ; not desired by normal man, 
204; per cent, enforced, 78. 

Impending Crisis, 91. 

Individual, not a producer, 112; tendency under Evolution, 205; variation 
of talents needful for progress, 203. 

Individualism, falsely so called, 203; its futility exposed, 112; small amount 
today, 203; when trying to be a thief, 112. 

Incentive under The Other Economics, 114, 117, 182, 190, 201. 

Industrial pursuits reduced to recreation, 194. 

Industries (See Economics, The Other). 

Income, average in 1910, 52, d^', determines morality, 207; taxing incomes 
no economic effect on poverty, 29; the minimum that people will en- 
dure, 66. 

Iron ore supply inexhaustible, 129. 

Insanity, evidenced by war, 38; relative to money, 213; where most pre- 
valent, 182; who is and is not, 213. 

Intemperance, its cause economic, 35, 4i> 206. 

Interest, not possible for all, 25. 

Intelligence, when dangerous, 28. 

Intestines, why used in meat-packing, 78. 

Intellect regarded as sacred by Deity, 141. 

Japan, child labor, T]\ nitrogen plant, 123. 

Jesus, economic advice, 141 ; His economic aim, 200 ; His "life more abund- 
ant", 200; His principle of business, 186; His opinion of criminal class, 
212 ; in an age of concrete, 186 ; plant of peace not yet realized, 24. 

Kitchens, under The Other Economics, 144. 

Labor, free trade in, 38; hard menial labor the badge of society's stupidity, 
115, 131; how to donate labor to advantage, 112, 120; how to shorten 
hours, 193; in relation to factory system, 93; saving 700 per cent, of 
labor time, 166; true sense of the term, 21 ; true definition of, 21. 

Labor Trusts, 35. 

Laborers, a commodity, 21, 35 ; blind to economic foe, 96 ; buy and sell them- 
selves, 21 ; displaced by steam power ; how re-employed, 91 ; how they 
might attain wealth, 190; when a blessing to be displaced, 151; reason 
for enforced idleness, 27; wage depends upon scarcity of laborers, 22. 



INDEX 247 

Labor saving inventions, book making, 132; berry picking, 134; barge un- 
loading, 136; butter making, 154; brick making, 184; cotton gin, Tz, 
162; carpet stitching, 131; canning, 132, 134; corn preparing, 134; corn 
planting, 149; chicken picking, 158; cane cutting, 159; cotton picking, 
161; cranberry picking, 134; cloth making, 131, 162; clothes making, 
164 ; concrete making, 185 ; do not increase wages, 81 ; do not increase 
average amount of consumption goods, 87; dredging, 135; displace 
more men than making of employs, 190 ; effect of Goths and Vandals, 
96; electricity manufacturing, 138; embroidery making, 131; excavat- 
ing, 13s, 136; free trade in, 38; farming, 133; floor scrubbing, 133; 
farm, electrified, 142 ; give some employment in construction, 92 ; grain 
storing, 133; grading, 136, 137, 187; grain harvesting, 133; gold min- 
ing, 187; home helping, 144; hay harvesting, 155; hosiery making, 165; 
iron handling, 132; ice havesting, 134; loading cars, 132, 133; lumber 
manufacturing, 183; mail handhng, 137, 138; meat raising, 156, 157; 
milking, 154; milk bottling, 154; mining, 168; orange handling, 134; 
office work, 137; paper printing, 132; plowing, 151 ; potato peeHng, 133; 
potato harvesting, 134, 151; pea hulling, 134; post hole digger, 136; 
power plant at Pittsburgh, Pa., 138; poultry raising, 157; present 
advantage of all such, 176; railways, 132; raisin handling, 134; road 
building, 136, 137; restaurant helps, 174; rock crushing, 135; sewing 
machine, 164; spinning, 131; street cleaning, 134; stone crushing, 135, 
188; stump pulling, 136; ship helps, 137; salmon canning, 158; sheep 
shearing, 163; shoe making, 165; transportation, 172; trench digging, 
135, 136, 187; vegetable planting, 152. 

Lace production, value per wage earner, 166. 

Laws, for whom originally enacted, 102. 

Liberty, how obtained, iii. 

Lime nitrogen, 123. 

Linen, its possibilities, 122 ; new process, 163. 

Loafers, made not born, 204 ; reason for, 182. 

London fish market destroying fish, 21. 

Love, superior to present system of economics, 216. 

Lumber supplies, 130. 

Luxuries, effect of one automobile, 53; people of the United States, 51, 53. 

Machinery (See Labor Saving Invention) ; too much results in over- 
production, 15. 

Mail, delivered automatically, 138. 

Man, his new productive power and his "old pay", 133; not a producer, 112. 

Marbles, and methods capitalized as wealth, 52. 

Marginal Utility in relation to quantity, 17. 



248 INDEX 

Market value of land under Single Tax, 30. 

Meat packing, rapidity of, 157; reason for employing children, 78; speeding 
the laborers, 78. 

Men, folly of good men, 103, 112; number required to produce "plenty" 
for all, 180-188. 

Mental capacity, inherited from whole line of ancestry, 200. 

Metamorphosis of society, 184. 

Methods, capitalized and counted as wealth, 51. 

Middlemen, do not effect poverty, 32; do the least harm where they are, 
32 ; economic effect if eliminated, 32. 

Millinery, value per wage earner, 166. 

Mills, are of value, when product desired but not produced, 20; could not 
run full time if men were angels, 25-49; effect, if a part were burned, 
20. 

Millionaire, does not possess or use much real wealth, 66; how all may 
possess equal wealth, 190; requirements to produce 1,000, annually, 54; 
the injustice of, 56. 

Mining, laborers employed in 1909, 170; under The Other Economics, 169. 

Milk, bottling machines, 153; method of production under The Other 
Economics, 153. 

Minds, children's scientific, 205; variety of, 200. 

Money, a delusion, 38, 64; a superstition, 61, 63; economic effect when 
plentiful, 117; insanity concerning same, 213; means of perpetuating 
poverty, 19, 63; not real wealth, 18, 63] object of, 18, 102; office of 
money, 64, 103, 54; produces nothing, 113; requisites in order to be 
money, 19; subject to the laws of grasping, 19; scarce for people, 19, 
55- 

Money-value, depends upon the future, 63; fluctuation of does not change 
quantity or quality of goods, 62; its delusion exposed, 64; increase of 
various articles, 61, 62 ; its relation to meat, 51 ; its increase depends 
upon absence of real wealth, 18; not the measure of wealth, 16, 18; 
of land, is the measure of the number of landless, 18; of products in 
1910, 51; of property, indicates poverty, 16, 51; two conditions neces- 
sary, 16; the measure of poverty of people, 18; wealth for all would 
destroy money-values, 18. 

Monopoly, definition, 15; methods and tactics same as individuals, 59; 
object of, 22. 

Monotony, its effects, 206. 

Moral sentiment follows economics, 106, 116. 

Morality reducing wages, 22, 41. 

Mortgages under Single Tax, 30. 



INDEX 34t) 

Mother, her love indicts the present economics, 216; the suicide, 212. 

Nations not profited by "foreign trade," 38. 

Navy, required to perpetuate poverty, 24; required to protect traders, 24, 
38. 

New Hampshire and corn yield per acre, 123. 

Niagara, powers of, 118. 

Nitrogen, bacteria innoculation of plants, 123 ; for fertilization, 123. 

Norway, nitrogen plant, 123. 

Oats, labor required to produce planty, 149. 

Object Lesson in Economics (See Government Economic Experiment 
Station), for the benefit of all, 109, 219; its relation to the outside 
world, 109, 219; preparing a revolution without bloodshed, 120, 219. 

Ocean, illustrating fallacy of Single Tax, 31 ; illustrating the fallacy of cer- 
tain Socialists, 44. 

Orthodox Economics, descriptive only, 14. 

Overproduction, happens when more than 95 cents daily ration is pro- 
duced, 50 ; how to escape it, loi ; the cause of every panic, 23, 54 ; the 
great menace now, 26, 49. 

Palace, servantless, 143. 

Panama Canal, nearly automatically constructed, 139; not so important as 
national cattle ranch, 156. 

Panic, cause of, 23, 54 ; real wealth not affected by same, 55 ; too many on 
farms would cause it, 26. 

Parable on Foreign Trade, 38. 

Patriotism, originally a selfish motive, 107. 

Patten, Prof. Simon N., in relation to income and morals, 207. 

Peat, its quantity and uses, 126. 

Penalty for laziness, 163. 

Per capita daily production in United States, 50. 

Per capita income small, 52. 

Pein, Herr Emil, tidal utility invention, 127. 

People, are capital, 112, 167; effected by readjustment of economics, 112; 
required under The Other Economics to produce plenty, 180, 188; 
should use reasoning powers, 141. 

Pittsburgh Electric Power plant, 138. 

Plants, innoculated with nitrogen, 123. 

Plato, powers of reasoning in his day, 198. 

Plenty, impossible for all at present, 13, 24 ; possible to all under The Other 
Economics, 190. 

Poets born, loafers made, 204. 

Polite society exhibiting The Other Economics, 103. 



250 INDEX 

Political Parties, how to swing into power, 40, 54, 70; juggling with pov- 
erty, 40; their bribe for votes, 40, 65; tricks of, 70; under subjection, 
40. 

Politicians like monkeys, 40. 

Population concentrates as wages decrease, 79. 

Poor, manifesting heroism, 183; moral heroism of, 207; moral nature of, 
207; not mentally inferior, 197. 

Potatoes, average yield in Prussia, 151 ; cause of their increased money- 
value, 18; illustrating fallacy of Single Tax, 31; value of, rests in 
minus quantity, 18. 

Poultry, as raised under The Other Economics, 157; as now raised on 
Long Island, 157. 

Poverty (See also Grasping), and laziness, 79; a social disease, 115; a 
check to moral regeneration, 203 ; cause of, 13, 45, 51, 66, 71 ; criminal 
standards, 112; guilt in consenting to it, 115; increasing, 51, 74; in 
cotton industry, 74; in relation to sickness, 80; in England, 80; in 
Germany, 75; in Bohemia, 75; its effects, 115 (See Grasping) ; not to 
be aboHshed under "prices", 13 to 49, ^T, not effected by education or 
skill, 28; not mitigated by willingness to work, 27; not cured by all 
saving, 25; not effected for good by strikes, 29; not effected by hon- 
esty, 29 ; not caused by individuals or trusts, 35 ; not caused by Profits, 
(y*]', not caused by Capitalism, 67; not effected by eliminating Middle- 
men, Z'2' ; not effected by present Socialism, 44 ; not effected by Single 
Tax, 29 ; not effected by Minimum Wage, 34 ; not effected by Govern- 
ment Control, 42; not effected by Government Ownership, 43; not 
effected for good by Foreign Trade, 38; not lessened by Communism, 
47; on steam ships, 14; of many, manifested, 54; prostitutes con- 
science, 59; prohibited under The Other Economics, 115; scientific 
proof of, 13, 17, 50 ; unnecessary evil, 190 to 196. 

Power, electricity, 127; obtained from Alcohol, 127; obtained from air in 
falling water, 127; obtained from sunlight, 128; obtained from tides, 
127; obtained from streams, 128; obtained from wind, 128; obtained 
from steam, 91. 

Power machinery (See Labor Saving Inventions), could be used in raising 
vegetables, 152; effect in Iron and Steel Industry, 89; little used, on 
the average, today, 85 ; reason for its sudden introduction, 89. 

Prices, high, diminished demand for goods, 14 ; induces destruction of real 
wealth, 19; of laborers increased by immorality, etc., 22, 41; prevents 
introduction of inventions, 85; same if no Middlemen, 32; varieties 
of poverty necessary thereto, 14. 

Private Property, object of, 102; the origin of, 102. 

Progress, checks to, 13, 25 to 49; how attainable, loi, 109, 225; its only 
gains, 48, 184. 



INDEX 261 

Problem, the great one today, 26, 49. 

Products, average daily per capita production of, 50; decreasing, 51; 
donated to advantage, 109, 225; left to the rule of "competition" by 
some Socialists, 44. 

Property, not diminished by Panics, 55 ; not increased by exchange, 56. 

Prostitutes not a distinct variety of womanhood, 214. 

Protective Tariff, its injustice, 38. 

Profit Sharing, a delusion, 42. 

Private Ownership, a bludgeon, 197 ; the wrong, 55, 56. 

Profits, average less than ten per cent., 6t, caused death of domestic 
manufacturing, 93; how diminished, 68; in agriculture small, 71; im- 
possible under The Other Economics, 109; not the cause of poverty, 
13, 6^', on sugar refining, 69; on Foreign Trade, 38. 

Productivity of labor, does not increase wages, T^, 

Prison labor, productive powers of, 160. 

Public Schools, educating away from present system, 203. 

Railways, building of, about finished, 95; number of miles in 1899, 91; 
number of cars, 91 ; ton-mile rate, 70. 

Regeneration of men, hastened by an economic change, 107, 113; inde- 
pendent of a system of economics, 106; regenerated men, now slaves, 
102. 

Real estate, its value dependent upon poverty, 18, 20, 62. 

Relief from poverty, amount offered by Single Tax, 30 ; how obtained, loi, 
109, 225; none for the majority under "grasping", 13, 25-49. 

Real Wealth, products, 52, 55, 62 ; smallness of at present, 60. 

Rental value under Single Tax, 29. 

Rent, defined, 15; dependent on poverty, 24; effect upon, if all owned 
homes, 24. 

Resources, 122. 

Revolt, its origin, 183, 205. 

Ricardo's formula for inferior wages, 15. 

Rome, Began like the Uhited States, 82; concentration of wealth therein, 
82; had same system of economics as present, 82. 

Saving, good for few only, 25; its bad effect on business if generally 
obeyed, 25. 

Scarce medium (See Money), 

Scarcity, its incentive destructive, 13, 22, ^y^ must be permanent, 14; 
necessary to money, 19, 55; necessary to products, 13 to 25; none in 
supplies of nature, 122; none for materials out of which to make 
Experts, 112; of laborers, increases wages, 22; of real estate, gives its 
value, 18, 20, 62; reasons for maintaining it, 13 to 24; some exceptions 
to general rule, 23. 



252 INDEX 

Scavenger and the most eminent scientist, 198. 

Seed, powers of right selection, 123. 

Self-interest, attracted by The Other Economics, 106, 190; its relation to 
greed, 113. 

Self-love holy as love, 113. 

Sewing women, before and after the sewing machine, Tz- 

Shoe making, modern methods, 165; persons engaged therein, 165; time 
required to make a pair, 165. 

Sheep, as raised under The Other Economics, 163. 

Silk, its possible cultivation, 122. 

Single Tax, analysis of, 29; cause of its confusion, 125; does not propose 
change of economics, 2(^\ effect on various values, 29; fallacy proven, 
29; total benefit offered, 30; workable for all only by magic, 30. 

Skill, dangerous for all, 28. 

Slavery, defended by Clergymen, 61 ; modern white and black, 102. 

Slums, how propegated, 119. 

Social metamorphosis, 184. 

Socialism as advocated by some, an impotent claim, 112; common error 
of, 112; economics same as Capitalism, 44; fallacy of, 104; false ideas, 
104 ; imperfect program, 44, 71 ; present need, 223 ; socialized grasp- 
ing, 44, 104; socializing tools only, 44; should favor an experiment of 
their ideal, 222^ ; the delusion of some Socialists, 105. 

Social unrest, the cause of, 79. 

Sparta, killing workmen when too numerous, 22. 

Speeding, why objected to, 40. 

Spinning, power machinery, 162. 

Standard Oil, dividends on value of its shares small, 70. 

Starvation, when proper, 210. 

Statesmen, not free, 204. 

Steel Trust, nature and extent of its wealth, 59. 

Steam Power, displacement, 85; its modernness, 85; restricted use of, 85; 
the first patent, 91 ; the first locomotive, 91 ; the overcrowded labor 
market, 91 ; the first Railroad, 91 ; wasted largely at present, 85. 

Steamships, stokers on same, 74; when first built, 92. 

Stokers, on steamships, 74. 

Strikes, do not effect poverty, 29 ; how to be of value to strikers, 29 ; the 
plunder of the many by a few, 29. 

Study, the cause for, ceasing, 201. 

Suicide, cause economic, 206, 212 ; close analysis of, 212. 

Sugar, product in 1909, 159; production under The Other Economics, 159; 
profit in refining, 69. 

Superstitions, money-value, 52, 55; productive capital, 113; surplus-values, 



INDEX 253 

abstract values, etc., 62 ; that money is "stored wealth," 63 ; that money 

makes money, 63. 
Sunlight, as a power, 128. 

Talents, individuality of, 198; why largely suppressed, 201. 
Tariff delusion, 38. 
Taxes, the folly of Income Tax, 51 ; the folly of Inheritance, 51 ; the folly 

of Single Tax, 29, 51. 
Teachers, advocating delusions, 25 to 49, 62, etc. ; further silence danger- 
ous, 97; their true aristocracy, 203; under subjection now, 61. 
Telegraph and Telephones, rapid advance, 92. 

Tenement houses, required by a grasping system, 26 ; typical American, 76. 
Texas, if occupied, 123. 
Theatre, its proper place, 204. 
Theft, cause economic, 206; incentive, how destroyed, 190; no proof of 

appetite for theft, 80; why criminal, 116, 
Theology, not yet enthroned God, 216. 
Thief (See Burglar). 
Thieves, cooperating, 104. 

Theories, ideal, ancient, 218; should be demonstrated, 218. 
Tide, utilized for power, 127. 
Trade, cause of war, 38; largely waste of time, 57; object of, 56; sub 

stitute for direct robbery, 102. 
Tramps, a benefit under a grasping system, 58. 
Transportation, under The Other Economics, 172. 
Trusts, dissolution of, no gain, 35 ; necessity for, 49 ; of laborers, 35. 
Truth, the trial of the new, 90. 
Unemployment, enforced, caused by introduction of steam power, 91 ; dock 

laborers, 74; half could produce plenty for Nation, 171, 180; number 

in 1900, 180. 
Unrest, social; cause of, 79. 
Value, abstract value, 62; dependent upon scarcity of products, 13 to 25; 

objective condition, 14; of farm property and implements, 51; of land 

under Single Tax, 30; rental value of property under Single Tax, 30; 

of homes, 62; subjective condition, 14; the superstitition of surplus 

values, 62. 
Variety of occupation, its good effects, 206. 
Virtue, how attained, 107; of a burglar, 209; sold under grasping sys 

tem, 214. 
Vision of Christianity, the new, 216. 
Wages, declining in the United States, 81 ; declining, causes population to 

congest, 79; effect upon, by occasional employment, 78; increased by 



254 INDEX 

war, dissipation, crime, 22; increased by lack of nourishment, 22; in- 
creased by lack of safety appliances, 22 ; increased by immorality, 22 ; 
not increased in six hundred years, 80; taken out of products, 50; 
Ricardo's formula for inferior limit, 14; the average, 2B, 

Wage system defined, 14 and 15. 

Wage workers, average unemployed in 1900, 180; blindness of, 40, 59, 60, 
61, 62; condition worse than in Middle Age, 80; competing against 
convicts, 88; during English history; 80; in England before factory 
system, 80; in European countries, 75; in iron and steel industries, 
80; monopolists to the extent of their ability, 23; no hope for, under 
grasping economics, 13 to 25 ; now privately owned, 59 ; of Stokers 
and Sailors, 74; of cotton spinners and sewing women, JZ) P^y all 
profits in foreign trade, 40; sell themselves cheaply, 87; the number 
employed with big tools, small, 86. 

War, an hereditary form of insanity, 38; cause economic, z^, 40 J caused, 
in a manner by democracy and education, 28; cost of, 53; the motive 
for, 40, 177, 210. 

Waste, by Middlemen, 32 ; harmless under a grasping system, 57 ; in retail 
methods, 172, 178; in suppressed talents, 183; in using wood for build- 
ing, 84; of powers of applied science, 85, 131; of labor, 131, etc; of 
people in prison, 160; of people too old to work ten hours a day, 194; 
total, 192. 

Water "melon", average cutting not large, 69. 

Water, generative power, 127, 128; productive power, 124. 

Wealth, a virtue, 116, 122; estimated per capita, 52; for all, and its effects, 
117; fictitious sort, 56; if equally distributed would vanish, 18; its con- 
sentration in Rome and the United Statep, 82; "methods" counted as 
wealth, 56; mostly invisible and intangible, 56; material, the lowest 
form, 117; new definition of present wealth, 59; not the cause of 
Rome's fall, 82, 117; of the rich, does not effect poverty, 51; smallness 
of J 59> 65; the reason for its stigma, 116; total wealth counts out the 
many, 62. 

Wheat, average yield in Great Britain, 148 ; production of, under The Other 
Economics, 148. 

Wickedness, caused by a grasping system, 102. 

Wind, powers of, 128. 

Women, breaking stone, carrying hod now, yG; under Government Owner- 
ship, 43; under The Other Economics, 141, 190; wages in making 
clothes, 7Z- 

Wool, its possible production, 122 ; how produced under The Other Econ- 
omics, 163. 

Work-people, not their own, iii. 



